WX;CEQRGf 


BLIND   ALLEY 


WRITINGS  OF  W.  L.  GEORGE 

IRovete 

A  BED  OF  ROSES 
THE  CITY  OF  LIGHT 
UNTIL  THE  DAY  BREAK 

(English  title,  Israel  Kalisch) 
THE  LITTLE  BELOVED 

(English  title,  The  Making  of  an  Englishman) 
THE  SECOND  BLOOMING 
THE  STRANGERS'  WEDDING 
OLGA  NAZIMOV,  (SHORT  STORIES) 
BLIND  ALLEY 


ANATOLE  FRANCE 
DRAMATIC  ACTUALITIES 
LITERARY  CHAPTERS 

(English  title,  A  Novelist  on  Novels) 


ENGINES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 
FRANCE  IN  THE  TWENTIETH  CENTURY 
LABOUR  AND  HOUSING  AT  PORT  SUNLIGHT 
WOMAN  AND  TO-MORROW 
THE  INTELLIGENCE  OF  WOMAN 
EDDIES  OF  THE  DAY 


BLIND  ALLEY 


BEING  THE  PICTURE  OF  A  VERT  GALLANT  GENTLE- 
MAN; THE  ADVENTURES  OF  HIS  SPIRIT  IN  WAR 
AND  PEACE  ;  THE  TALE  OF  HIS  DAUGHTERS,  HIS  SON, 
THEIR  FRIENDS;  OF  THEIR  LOVES  AND  MISERIES; 
OF  THE  WAT  OF  THE  WORLD  THROUGH  THE  GREAT 

WAR  INTO  THE  UNEXPLORED  REGIONS  OF  PEACE 


BY 

W.   L.   GEORGE 


BOSTON 

LITTLE,   BROWN,   AND   COMPANY 
1919 


Copyright,   1919, 
BY  W.  L.  GEORGE. 

Copyright  in  Great  Britain,  Ireland,  and  British  Colonies 
and  in  all  countries  under  the  Convention  by  W.  L.  George. 


All  rights  reserved. 


Norinooto  tyrtss 
Set  up  and  electrotyped  by  J.  S.  Gushing  Co.,  Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


' 


I  DEDICATE   THIS  BOOK 
TO  RUSSET 

AND 
KALLIKRATES 


CONTENTS 

BOOK   ONE 

In  England   . 

BOOK    TWO 

Among  the  Yahoos 173 


BOOK   T] 

The  Lone  Grey  Company 335 


BOOK  ONE 
IN  ENGLAND 


Weep,  willow,  weep  o'er  the  stream  that  wanders, 
Yet  never  retraces  its  course; 
Weep,  willow,  weep  for  the  twilight  of  lovers 
And  all  that  are  racked  in  a  world  run  astray  .   , 


BLIND  ALLEY 

BOOK  ONE 
IN  ENGLAND 


ON  soft,  felted  pads,  Kallikrates  came  out  of  the 
library.  For  a  moment,  framed  in  the  oak  doorway,  he 
stood,  his  orange  coat  raised  by  apprehension.  The  nar- 
row black  lunes  of  his  yellow  eyes  expanded  as,  laden 
with  suspicion,  he  surveyed  the  noonday  emptiness  of  the 
hall,  the  flickering  shadows  thrown  by  the  log  fire;  he 
listened  to  the  ticking  of  the  clock,  to  the  regular  snore 
of  Toss,  the  old  collie,  who  lay  before  the  hearth.  His 
long,  sinewy  body  was  banded  as  an  arc,  animate  with 
lust  and  fear;  he  waited  for  that  something  to  happen 
which,  instinct  and  experience  told  him,  must  ever  be 
guarded  against  in  the  homes  of  men.  But  the  silence 
was  profound;  the  intensity  receded  from  the  watered 
agate  of  his  eyes.  Kallikrates  understood  that  the  con- 
ventions still  prevailed,  that  men  were  eating.  Content, 
he  squatted,  gave  a  few  casual  licks  to  the  thick,  silky 
fur  of  his  left  thigh. 

Then  a  new  thought  entered  his  mind ;  he  paused,  thigh 
upraised,  pink  tongue  edging  as  the  petal  of  a  peony  the 
pale  bluntness  of  his  nose.  Immensely  watchful,  con- 
scious of  encircling  perils,  Kallikrates  crept  along  the 
wall  of  the  corridor,  found  the  study  door  open,  leapt 


ALLEY 


and  fell,  light  as  a  mustard  seed,  upon  his  master's  desk. 
At  once  he  felt  removed  from  a  world  of  strife ;  peace  and 
security  held  him  in  fee;  soon  his  lids  obscured  all  save 
a  gleaming  stripe  of  eyeball.  A  sunbeam  fell  on  his 
broad  flank,  burnished  the  copper  markings  on  the  pale 
gold  hair.  He  furled  his  tail  about  him;  his  squat  head 
sank  to  the  great  paws  which,  one  after  the  other,  he 
folded.  Slowly,  as  a  singer  humming  to  himself,  he 
began  to  purr. 

II 

As  Sir  Hugh,  a  little  after  his  womankind,  sat  down  to 
lunch,  Lady  Oakley  cried  out: 

"  Hugh !     Cradoc  says  he  won't  go." 

"  Oh,"  said  Sir  Hugh.     "  No  soup,  Sutton,  please." 

"  Oh,  do  have  some  hot  soup,"  said  Louise  Douglas. 
"  You've  been  out  in  the  wet  all  the  morning." 

"Perfectly  scandalous!"  said  Lady  Oakley.  "That 
man's  had  every  chance  to  join  up.  In  '14  you  said  you'd 
let  him  off  his  rent.  When  the  Derby  scheme  was  on  I 
went  to  see  him  myself.  But  he  didn't  attest,  and  now 
compulsion's  come  he  says  he  won't  go.  Hugh,  we  can't 
let  it  go  on.  We  don't  want  —  what  do  they  call  it, 
a  conscientious  objector  in  the  village.  You  must  make 
him  enlist." 

"  After  the  soup,  dear,"  said  Sir  Hugh  negligently. 

Louise  and  Monica  began  to  giggle,  and  Sir  Hugh, 
looking  up,  caught  a  gleam  of  merriment  in  the  eyes  of 
Lee,  who  stood  by  the  tortured  marble-topped  Louis  XV 
table,  preparing  to  carve  the  joint.  He  looked  away  hur- 
riedly, but  a  warmth  of  friendliness  rose  between  him 
and  the  old  butler,  who  had  played  with  him  when  he  was 
a  small  boy;  the  room  was  filled  with  a  hint  of  amiable 


IN  ENGLAND  5 

mockery  directed  against  Lady  Oakley.  She  did  not 
seem  to  mind.  She  was  a  very  handsome  woman  of 
about  forty-five,  with  thick,  dark  red  hair  and  a  good 
skin  where  rose,  white  and  yellow  had  blended  in  a  pleas- 
ant, uniform  colour.  She  was  growing  rather  stout,  but 
hers  was  a  jovial  stoutness;  the  suspicion  of  mockery  did 
not  dull  the  sherry-bright  vivacity  of  her  brown  eyes,  or 
stale  the  good  curves  of  her  rather  thick  lips.  Still,  she 
felt  impelled  to  decisive  assertions. 

"  It's  all  very  well  your  making  jokes  about  it,  Hugh. 
This  isn't  a  joking  matter.  When  the  country's  come  to 
such  a  pass,  when  it  needs  the  services  of  every  able- 
bodied  man  and  woman,  we  can't  afford  to  allow  ex- 
amples like  the  one  Cradoc  is  giving  all  those  young  men 
who've  nothing  better  to  do  than  sit  in  the  King's  Arms." 

"  I  thought  Cradoc  was  a  teetotaler,"  said  Monica. 

"  That  makes  it  worse,"  said  Lady  Oakley,  with  much 
severity  and  little  relevance.  "  This  is  not  the  time  for 
cranks." 

"  Like  the  King,"  said  Monica,  slewing  her  grey  eyes 
towards  her  father.  "  You  know  he  took  the  pledge  in 
March,  while  poor  Cradoc  ..." 

"  Now,  Monica,"  said  Lady  Oakley,  "  don't  be  irritat- 
ing. Even  if  the  King  and  Mr.  Cradoc  do  do  the  same 
thing,  it's  different.  The  beef's  overdone.  Burnt  to  a 
cinder.  And  I  don't  know  what  Mrs.  Marsden's  doing; 
we  never  seem  to  get  any  fish  here." 

"One  doesn't  at  the  seaside,"  said  Louise;  "at  least 
nobody  catches  anything  except  the  Londoners.  We've 
got  a  poor  little  blind  Cockney  at  the  hospital ;  he  spends 
most  of  his  day  by  the  harbour,  and  he  catches  as  many 
fish  as  the  Pied  Piper  caught  rats.  Poor  chap!  he  was 
at  Gallipoli." 

"  Ah,  yes,  Gallipoli,"  said  Sir  Hugh  gloomily. 


6  BLIND  ALLEY 

There  was  a  long  silence,  for  on  that  morning,  the 
ninth  of  January,  1916,  England  knew  that  the  last  inch 
of  that  blood-stained  peninsula  had  been  abandoned. 
Sir  Hugh  felt  the  remoteness  of  this  gritty,  dusty,  arid 
rock  on  which,  beyond  his  sight,  almost  beyond  his 
knowledge,  so  many  young  Australians,  R.  N.  V.  R's,  so 
many  of  his  own  Sussex  Coast  Regiment  had  fallen. 
Through  the  windows,  flowered  with  frost,  he  saw  the 
English  sun  fall  like  silver  on  the  sodden  downs  which 
rolled  away  from  Udimore  to  Rye  marsh  in  its  midday 
veil  of  opaline  haze,  to  the  tree-tufted  knoll  of  Winchel- 
sea,  to  little  red  and  yellow  Rye,  to  the  still,  wintry  sea, 
grey  as  the  wing  of  a  cygnet.  He  sighed,  and  repeated: 

"Ah,  yes,  Gallipoli!" 

"  They  say  we  paid  the  Turks  five  millions  to  let  us 
off,"  said  Lady  Oakley.  She  pondered  for  a  moment, 
and  as  there  was  in  the  Cawston  stock  from  which  she 
sprang  a  lurking  coarseness,  added:  "They'd  have  come 
in  on  our  side  for  half  that  if  we'd  played  our  cards 
properly.  However,  I  suppose  we  must  make  the  best 
of  it.  Now  we've  got  compulsion  at  last,  we  shall  be  all 
right." 

"  I  suppose  so,"  said  Sir  Hugh.  "  Still  it  seems  a  pity. 
I  thought  the  Derby  scheme  would  pull  us  through  with- 
out our  having  to  come  to  this.  I'd  have  liked  to  think 
—  but  what's  the  good?  War's  not  cricket.  At  least, 
not  the  way  it's  played  nowadays." 

"  Of  course  it's  not  cricket,"  cried  Lady  Oakley. 
"  We've  got  to  win.  And  though  we've  got  all  sorts  of 
people  trying  to  set  class  against  class,  people  like  that 
man  Simon,  who  resigns  because  he's  against  compulsion 
instead  of  sticking  to  his  guns  like  a  decent  man  — 
Monica,  I  won't  be  interrupted." 

"  But,  Mother,  I  didn't  say  anything." 


IN  ENGLAND  7 

"  You  were  going  to  say  something,"  said  Lady  Oakley, 
presumably  conscious  that  her  daughter,  in  the  irritating 
way  which  recalled  her  father's  worst  moments,  had 
detected  some  gap  in  her  logic.  Swiftly  she  carried  the 
attack  into  her  daughter's  lines.  "  Instead  of  sitting 
there  making  fun  of  me,  and  I'm  sure  I  don't  know 
about  what,  you'd  do  much  better  to  be  doing  something. 
In  days  like  these,  when  every  able-bodied  man  and 
woman  ..." 

"  I  know,  I  know,  Mother,"  said  Monica.  "  It's  not 
my  fault  if  I'm  not  as  strong  as  a  dray  horse  like  Louise, 
and  can't  scrub  stairs  and  mend  roofs,  which,  I  believe, 
is  the  chief  occupation  of  hospital  nurses.  Whenever  I 
want  to  do  something  you  don't  like  it." 

"  Well,  then,  you  should  want  to  do  something  else." 

"  But  you  don't  like  that,  Mother.  You  wouldn't  let 
me  go  out  with  the  Motor  Ambulance  people." 

"  Sylvia  went,  and  you  know  it  wasn't  a  success.  A 
little  more  currant  roll,  Sutton." 

"  And  when  I  had  that  chance  at  the  Foreign  Office 

j> 

"  How  can  you  be  a  clerk  in  the  Foreign  Office  with 
two  uncles  and  a  grandfather  in  it?  " 

"  Please  don't  quarrel,  Lena,"  said  Sir  Hugh.  A 
pucker  of  irritation  formed  between  his  level,  black 
brows.  He  was  a  thin  man,  of  medium  size,  with  square, 
greyish  hair.  He  looked  about  fifty,  but  his  dark  grey 
eyes,  Monica's  eyes,  were  still  young.  The  hand  that 
stroked  the  clipped,  black  and  grey  moustache  was  large 
but  well-modelled;  it  arrested  attention  less  than  the 
high,  bony,  beak-like  nose,  which  had  been  set  as  a 
brand  upon  the  face  of  nearly  every  male  Oakley  for 
the  last  two  centuries.  Sir  Hugh  looked  accurate  and 
wide-minded;  there  was  about  him  flexibility  as  well  as 


8  BLIND  ALLEY 

hardness,  as  if  he  were  a  rapier-man  rather  than  a 
bludgeon-man. 

So,  by  degrees,  the  Sunday  dinner  came  to  its  end, 
combative  and  rich  in  irritations,  as  if  that  morning's 
tragedy  in  the  ^Egean  Sea  had  stirred  little  passions  into 
great  ones,  marred  the  peaceful  loveliness  of  that  old 
house  by  the  Channel.  Lady  Oakley  moved  away  to 
the  drawing-room  to  resume  her  perusal  of  the  last  vol- 
ume of  Mr.  Ian  Hay,  an  author  whom  she  ranged  second 
only  to  Mr.  Kipling.  The  two  girls  reappeared  for  a 
moment  in  the  lime  avenue,  —  thick-booted,  loud- 
tweeded,  felt-hatted,  —  and  disappeared,  while  Sir  Hugh, 
without  a  smile,  received  from  the  butler  a  saucer  on 
which  lay  some  shavings  of  the  overdone  beef.  With  this 
he  walked  away  towards  the  study. 

Ill 

THE  dining  room  at  Knapenden  Place  was  closely  in- 
dicative of  its  owner.  The  house  itself  was  neither  very 
old  nor  beautiful.  Built  in  the  seventeenth  century  by 
an  early  Oakley,  it  bore  the  heavy  brick  brand  of  the 
Queen  Anne  taste  that  fell,  respectable  as  a  policeman's 
white-gloved  hand,  on  the  airy  rascalities  of  Stuart 
architects.  It  lay  on  the  top  of  Udimore  ridge,  looking 
towards  the  sea,  solemn  rather  than  defiant.  Behind  the 
broad  hall  ran  the  library,  a  dusty  store  of  fungus- 
threatened  country  histories,  collected  sermons,  remains 
of  the  Pusey  and  the  Paley  controversies,  three-volume 
novels  in  the  last  stage  of  obscurity,  diaries  of  silly  tours 
written  by  silly  noblemen,  the  usual  lumber  room  of  the 
country  house,  where  small  boys  play  cricket  on  wet 
days  and  are  ultimately  swished.  A  few  family  por- 
traits, an  Oakley  in  a  slashed  doublet  by  an  unknown 


IN  ENGLAND  9 

painter,  an  Oakley  in  a  braided  uniform,  a  pretty  girl 
painted  by  Hoppner  prettily ;  Romney 's  exquisite  "  Be- 
linda", and  the  overflow  of  Sir  Hugh's  collection  of 
George  Morlands. 

The  right  wing  held  the  drawing-room,  very  white  and 
gilt,  crackling  with  chintz,  much  cumbered  with  Barto- 
lozzis  and  Lowestoft  china.  It  extended  itself  into  the 
ballroom  that,  in  those  days  of  war,  was  pitifully  cold, 
with  its  dust-sheeted  chairs  and  swathed  chandelier. 
The  left  wing  was  almost  entirely  occupied  by  the  big 
dining  room,  harmonious  and  lovely,  with  its  white  walls 
and  scarlet  brocade  curtains;  Sir  Hugh's  precious  Mor- 
lands, twenty-three  in  number,  hung  there,  sober  and 
mellow,  along  the  line.  Sir  Hugh  loved  that  long  room, 
the  prospect  over  the  South  Terrace  to  the  lime  avenue, 
Knapenden  village  and  the  sea,  but  he  found  a  greater 
intimacy  in  the  small  rooms  that  ran  along  the  back,  — 
a  little  morning  room  abutting  on  the  now  parrotless 
aviary,  a  gun  room  with  the  brown,  balanced  barrels 
quietly  shining  in  their  glass  case.  He  liked  close  places, 
where  friendly  objects  jostle  their  possessor,  so  he  loved 
his  study  best  of  all;  it  was  his  keep,  almost  as  secret 
as  the  keep  of  his  heart. 

The  study  was  a  smallish  room  on  the  right  side  of  the 
hall.  Its  walls  were  of  carved  oak,  entirely  hidden  by  a 
close  covering  of  shelves  where  books  were  crowded  and 
tumbled  without  much  order.  They  were  a  strange  and 
large  selection,  books  suggesting  a  certain  diversity  of 
interests,  "  The  Wealth  of  Nations  ",  "  Progress  and  Pov- 
erty ",  many  modern  novels,  quite  close  to  "  The  Prin- 
ciples of  Banking";  evidently  the  owner  was  a  politician 
and  a  man  of  affairs,  for  he  had  collected  Morley's  "  On 
Compromise  ",  Cromer's  "  Modern  Egypt ",  and  many 
such  like;  much  of  the  space  was  occupied  by  the  Trans- 


10  BLIND  ALLEY 

actions  of  the  Institute  of  Bankers,  and  by  crowding 
blue  books,  some  in  the  last  stage  of  decay  and  dirt. 
Indeed,  the  study  was  worthy  of  love,  for  it  was  much 
dirtier  than  the  whole  house  put  together,  the  sort  of 
study  that  has  a  quality  of  the  intangible  because  people 
seldom  dust  it.  It  had  other  sides,  too,  rather  stranger, 
exemplified  by  a  number  of  French  novels,  nearly  all 
Anatole  France,  some  Zola,  a  good  many  Balzacs,  some 
French  translations  of  Dostoievsky,  and  unexpectedly 
Villiers  de  1'Isle  Adam  and  Barbey  d'Aurevilly.  Sprawl- 
ing in  the  middle  of  the  desk  lay  "  La  Chartreuse  de 
Parme  ",  a  ninepenny-halfpenny  edition,  obviously  picked 
up  on  a  bookstall.  A  large  desk,  eight  feet  long,  a  hard 
wood  armchair,  fit  for  a  saint  turned  bookkeeper,  and  a 
couple  of  large  club  armchairs,  fit  for  a  saint  in  moments 
of  temptation.  No  pictures,  but  many  pipes.  Along  the 
edge  of  the  desk  a  row  of  photographs  of  vivid-looking 
young  people,  and  on  the  right-hand  corner,  humped  and 
purring,  Kallikrates  in  a  state  of  wary  somnolence. 

Sir  Hugh  came  in  quite  quietly,  carrying  the  saucer. 
He  trod  gently,  for  he  wanted  to  surprise  Kallikrates, 
an  old  ambition  so  far  ungratified.  Seeing  that  a  stripe 
of  watchful  amber  appeared' under  the  cat's  eyelids,  Sir 
Hugh  sat  down,  placing  the  saucer  beside  him,  and 
vaguely  busied  himself  with  "  La  Chartreuse  de  Parme." 
This  bespoke  another  ambition:  to  induce  Kallikrates  to 
display  desire;  this,  too,  was  seldom  gratified.  After  a 
moment  he  looked  sideways  at  the  cat  and  in  despair 
said  to  him:  "  I've  no  time  for  you.  I've  got  a  heavy 
job  on.  We're  going  to  hold  up  some  roads,  most  of  the 
roads;  we've  no  men  to  make  them,  do  you  hear?  "  As 
Kallikrates  showed  no  signs  of  hearing,  Sir  Hugh  took 
up  the  East  Sussex  Council  Scheme,  proposing  to  main- 
tain trunk  roads,  to  abandon  certain  arteries  in  rural 


IN  ENGLAND  11 

districts,  and  for  a  moment  absorbed  himself  in  this  work. 

For  Sir  Hugh  Oakley  was  what  is  called  a  practical 
man;  son  of  a  diplomat,  he  found  in  his  line  mostly 
country  gentlemen,  here  and  there  a  soldier  and,  most 
notably,  his  grandfather,  killed  at  Trafalgar.  He  him- 
self had  been  intended  for  the  diplomatic  service,  but 
that  shrewd,  hard  streak  in  him  which  was  suggested  by 
his  bony  nose  had  brought  him  to  desire  some  practical 
association  with  life.  He  had  thought  of  politics,  of  the 
amiable  spaciousness  of  Liberal  Unionism,  but  at  bottom 
he  preferred  realities.  So  he  had  drifted  into  an  old, 
private  bank,  allied  to  the  Oakleys,  of  which  they  had 
always  been  a  little  ashamed.  Sir  Hugh  found  no  prej- 
udice in  himself;  he  had  enjoyed  those  twenty  years  in 
the  bank,  and  would  leave  the  Oakleys  a  little  richer  than 
he  had  found  them,  which  was  not  done  in  his  family. 
Now  he  had  retired,  and  his  activities  were  mainly  local, 
concerned  with  the  county  council,  with  the  harbour 
board,  with  all  things  that  needed  the  unusual  combina- 
tion of  good  breeding  and  good  brains.  Sir  Hugh  liked 
business;  a  balance  sheet  gave  him  the  sensual  satisfac- 
tion that  the  mathematician  finds  in  a  perfect  solution: 
for  a  balance  sheet  —  balances.  That  is  so  harmonious. 

But  that  day  the  disturbance  of  the  morning  was  still 
on  him,  and  after  a  moment  he  laid  down  the  road  plan, 
turned  to  Kallikrates  and  put  forward  a  finger  until  it 
was  but  half  an  inch  from  the  cat's  nose.  Slowly  Kalli- 
krates opened  his  eyes  and  looked  at  him  with  a  gaze  in 
which  was  no  emotion,  not  even  surprise.  Sir  Hugh 
despised  himself  as  he  pushed  his  finger  still  closer  to 
touch  the  firm,  cool  nose  and  at  last,  as  an  honour,  to 
receive  the  condescending  caress  of  the  long,  white  whis- 
kers. It  was  not  much,  but  still  Sir  Hugh  supposed  it 
was  love,  so  he  pushed  forward  the  saucer,  at  which 


12  BLIND  ALLEY 

Kallikrates  gazed  with  an  air  of  armed  neutrality.  Irri- 
tated, Sir  Hugh  pushed  it  still  further  until  the  meat  lay 
under  the  cat's  nose.  But  Kallikrates  sniffed  and  turned 
away  his  head  as  if  his  master  had  made  him  some 
unseemly  proposal. 

Sir  Hugh  bent  forward,  smiling,  and  said:  "Bloated 
Pharisee,  corpulent  capitalist.  There  you  sit,  swathed  in 
your  furry  fat,  olympian  and  repulsive  as  a  Jove  satiated 
with  nectar  and  ambrosia.  You're  like  all  cats,  a  vile 
freeman,  escaped  from  the  trammels  of  life.  Like  all 
your  breed  you  know  the  art  of  survival,  how  to  obtain 
food  without  labour,  house  room  without  confinement, 
love  without  its  penalties.  You  are  irresponsible  and 
vile,  empyrean  and  adorable." 

Then  Kallikrates  slowly  turned  away  from  the  offence 
of  the  gratuitous  offering,  about  his  haunches  furled  the 
sunset  of  his  tail,  sank  into  sleep. 

And  Sir  Hugh,  looking  out  for  a  moment  over  the 
gravelled  court,  to  the  humid  marshes,  wrapped  in  grey 
gauze  like  Rhine  maidens,  fell  to  thinking  of  those  people 
before  him  in  their  silver  photograph  frames,  of  his 
daughter  Sylvia,  so  large  in  her  heavy  furs,  so  dominat- 
ing that  even  in  the  photograph  her  hair  looked  matted 
with  natural  oils,  her  thick  mouth,  like  her  mother's, 
imperious.  He  reflected  that  he  did  not  love  his  daugh- 
ter as  much  as  a  father  should.  Somehow  Sylvia  was 
excessive.  She  had  married  poor  Langrick  so  suddenly, 
when  the  war  broke  out,  just  as  so  many  thousands  of 
girls  had  married  then,  because  the  war  was  a  stimulus, 
or  a  warning  that  life  is  short,  or  perhaps  because  they 
were  jealous  of  the  great  adventure  granted  to  men,  and 
determined  to  affront  the  only  adventure  that  is  woman's, 
the  adventure  of  love.  And  Langrick  had  been  shot. 
And  she  had  nearly  married  other  people,  at  least  so  it 


IN  ENGLAND  13 

had  seemed.  And  now  she  had  just  married  Jervaulx. 
Ah!  she  was  not  like  Monica. 

Sir  Hugh  took  up  the  other  photograph  and  looked  for 
some  time  at  the  curious,  half-beautiful  face  of  his  other 
daughter.  Too  tall,  of  course,  too  thin,  not  the  beauty 
of  the  family.  But  the  serious  eyes  that  looked  at  him 
touched  something  intimate,  not  by  any  copy-book  virtue 
of  young-girlish  sincerity,  but  by  some  questfulness  in 
their  cool  depth.  Something  humorous,  too,  clung  about 
the  corners  of  the  broad  mouth.  Yes,  his  daughter  more 
than  Sylvia;  his  eyes;  the  only  one  who  had  his  eyes. 
Not  even  Stephen,  who  stood  there,  a  knobbly  hobble- 
dehoy, with  big  bones  sticking  out  at  unexpected  places 
through  the  khaki,  Stephen  who  carried  the  great" Oakley 
nose  with  the  thin-skinned  bridge,  no,  not  even  Stephen 
was  his  son  as  much  as  Monica  was  his  daughter.  For 
there  hung  in  Stephen's  ironic  eyes  something  that  always 
disquieted  his  father:  even  at  school  he  had  been  so  self- 
assured,  so  clearly  a  skeptic;  he  had  never  respected 
anything ;  he  had  never  even  condescended  to  break  a  law. 
Stephen  was  not  the  young  generation  knocking  at  the 
door:  he  had  been  born  on  the  other  side.  ' 

"What  is  to  become  of  all  of  them?  Of  all  of  us?  " 
thought  Sir  Hugh,  as  for  a  moment  he  rested  his  chin 
upon  the  large  hand.  "  All  of  us  thrown  head-first  into 
convulsion,  all  of  us  who  were  born  in  peace.  Here  we 
are  with  eighteen  months  of  it  behind  us.  Of  course  it 
won't  last.  There's  the  offensive  coming  this  summer. 
Might  finish  by  Christmas  with  a  little  luck.  But  still  — 
there's  Sylvia,  twice  married  before  she's  twenty -three  — 
and  Monica  twenty-six  and  not  married  at  all.  Mar- 
ried! and  what  of  it  in  war  time?  Sylvia's  lost  one 
man  —  Jervaulx's  in  an  infantry  regiment,  who  knows? 
And  young  Hum.  He  seemed  fond  of  Monica  —  per- 


14  BLIND  ALLEY 

haps  a  sniper's  got  him  while  we  were  having  lunch. 
And  Stephen  too.  We  sent  a  battalion  of  Sussex  Coast 
to  Gallipoli.  Where  is  it?  Perhaps  ..." 

But  here  Sir  Hugh  stopped  suddenly  as  he  thought  of 
his  long,  bony  son.  Now,  beyond  the  very  faintest 
doubt,  under  fire,  as  he  thought  of  him.  No,  he  must 
not  think  of  it.  Or  all  the  time  he'd  think  of  it.  And 
Stephen  writing  him  hideous,  cheerful  letters  with  mes- 
sages to  his.  mother,  saying  he'd  taken  to  woodbines 
since  she'd  written  him  about  national  economy.  A 
flicker  of  rage  passed  through  Sir  Hugh,  and  he  said 
aloud:  "Damn  Bairnsfather." 

With  an  effort  he  cast  aside  the  sorrow  of  the  world; 
he  blotted  out  the  picture  of  change.  Change  has  risen 
about  him  as  water  that  ripples  along  the  side  of  a  break- 
water, engulfing  one  by  one  the  riches  gained  by  civilisa- 
tion, easy  feeding,  easy  clothing,  uncensored  opinions, 
and  laughter,  and  dancing,  and  pictures  worth  looking 
at;  it  had  given  him  instead  the  scarlet  and  gold  of  such 
a  war,  with  all  the  splendid,  canting  merriment  of  youth- 
ful self-sacrifice.  It  must  be,  it  was  necessary,  it  was 
right.  And  it  must  go  on  —  a  music-hall  snatch  ran 
through  his  mind,  "  Until  we've  wound  up  the  watch  on 
the  Rhine." 

With  a  conscious  effort  Sir  Hugh  broke  away  from 
this  thing  like  a  black,  hairy  monster,  like  a  drawing  by 
Edmund  Sullivan,  took  up  "  La  Chartreuse  de  Parme  " 
to  hide  in  the  comic-opera  passion  of  Fabrice  those  shapes 
that  had  arisen  from  the  mist.  Then  he  grew  conscious 
of  a  contact:  very  softly,  like  a  voluptuous  sultana  that 
stretched  her  lithe  body,  Kallikrates  had  turned  and  laid 
upon  the  back  of  his  hand  the  caress,  light  as  a  butterfly's 
wing,  of  a  cool,  velvet-edged  pad. 


IN  ENGLAND  15 

IV 

LADY  OAKLEY  was  always  busy  on  Monday  mornings. 
She  felt  better  on  Monday  morning,  which  shows  that  at 
heart  she  must  have  been  a  religious  woman.  Also, 
because  she  felt  better,  she  realised  that  the  household 
was  not  run  in  the  way  it  should  be.  She  was  not 
responsible  for  the  household;  this  duty  belonged  to  Mrs. 
Marsden,  and  Lady  Oakley  did  not  like  quarrelling  with 
Mrs.  Marsden,  for  the  housekeeper  said  "  Yes,  my  lady  ", 
and  in  the  end  did  something  quite  different.  So,  this 
morning,  as  she  noticed  Lee  doing  nothing  in  particular 
at  the  dining-room  door  (which  he  was  quite  justified  in 
doing,  being  the  butler)  she  went  up  to  him  and  said: 
"  By  the  way,  Lee,  I  suppose  you  realise  that  under  the 
new  act  Sutton  will  be  called  up." 

"  No,  my  lady.    He  was  rejected  when  he  attested." 

"  Oh,  there  won't  be  anybody  rejected  now.  He'll  have 
to  go,  and  Peele'll  have  to  go  too.  And  —  let  me  see,  I 
expect  Temple  will  pass.  We'll  have  to  get  women  in." 

"  Wimmin!  "  cried  Lee.  (Rather  than  a  cry  it  was  a 
squeak  of  horror.)  "Wimmin!  Did  your  ladyship  say 
wimmin?  " 

"  Yes,"  said  Lady  Oakley  ferociously.  "  I  hope  that 
within  six  months  every  man  in  this  village  and  who  can 
walk  will  be  gone." 

"  Very  well,  my  lady,"  said  Lee,  and  went  away.    He 
was  a  large,  stout  man,  with  the  watery  eyes  that  arey 
often  met  among  butlers  and  deans.    His  nose  gave  him 
a  false  air  of  authority;  indeed,  it  was  as  like  Sir  Hugh's 
nose  as  was  proper  in  a  servant. 

Lady  Oakley  looked  for  a  moment  after  his  vast  re- 
treating rotundities.  Then,  feeling  better,  she  walked 
along  the  lime  avenue  towards  the  village. 


16  BLIND  ALLEY 

It  was  not  far  to  the  village;  indeed,  the  whole  of  old 
Knapenden  lay  within  the  boundary  of  the  fifteen-hun- 
dred-acre estate.  From  Knapenden  Place,  straight  past 
the  south  terrace  and  round  the  lawn,  the  road  ran 
through  the  lime  avenue,  down  the  vale,  and  rose  sud- 
denly as  it  joined  the  main  road.  Here  was  the  village 
green,  a  triangular  patch  near  a  muddy  pond,  surrounded 
by  the  microcosm  of  English  rural  life:  cobbler,  working- 
men's  club,  grocer,  inn,  ironmonger  (with  cycle  and 
perhaps  motor-car  ambitions).  In  an  offshoot  of  the 
main  road  vegetated  a  draper  and  luxuriated  a  butcher, 
while  a  chemist  of  considerable  superiority  enhanced  his 
aloofness  with  the  dignities  of  the  Civil  Service,  repre- 
sented by  the  post-office.  On  the  south  side  of  the  green 
stood  the  altogether  atrocious  1860  church.  It  was  built 
on  the  site  of  some  older  and  more  modest  fane,  but  now, 
with  pitch-pine  pews  and  the  smell  thereof,  and  steam- 
fathered  stained  glass,  it  might  have  been  called  St. 
Samuel  Smiles.  By  its  side  was  built  the  vicarage,  all 
brick,  suggesting  a  wealthy  glebe,  founded  upon  a  faith 
that  sought  not  support  in  another  region.  Three  more 
little  streets  of  labourers'  cottages;  that  was  all. 

Beyond  the  eastern  boundary,  a  New  Knapenden  was 
rising,  a  Knapenden  known  as  Villa-Land,  where  every 
cottage  looked  as  if  it  were  built  for  the  peasant,  but 
housed  the  week-ender  or  the  pensioner;  where  the  ample 
land  had  parsimoniously  been  split  up  by  the  builder  who 
had  bought  up  Udimore  Down  and  re- christened  it  "A 
Desirable  Lot";  where  the  preliminaries  of  drains  and 
of  gas  lamps  had  carved  into  the  turf,  and  where,  right 
and  left,  without  plan,  ran  Greville  Road  and  Chats- 
worth  Place.  Already  Balmoral  Avenue  was  indicated 
by  a  boundary  of  palings  beyond  which  had  accumulated, 
no  one  knew  how,  many  tins,  dead  cats  and  old  hats. 


IN  ENGLAND  17 

The  Oakleys  instinctively  disliked  Villa-Land  and  never 
turned  to  the  east.  They  were  not  age- crusted  people, 
but  they  liked  the  new  to  arise  from  the  old,  not  to  be 
grafted. 

So  Lady  Oakley,  following  tradition,  went  down  into 
the  village.  £>he  stopped  for  a  moment  at  the  cross- 
roads. On  that  bright,  frosty  morning  there  still  hung 
a  white  speck  on  every  blade  of  grass.  She  could  see  the 
land  roll  away,  past  the  road  lined  with  naked  oaks  and 
ash,  towards  Winchelsea  marsh  that  was  all  hers,  and 
out  of  which  rose  Ballagher's  Farm.  All  that  was  Oak- 
ley land,  to  the  south  and  to  the  west,  below  the  ridge 
to  Stoat's  Farm,  and  above  it,  where  it  fell  away  to  the 
Rother,  and  again  where  it  rose  to  the  high  row  of  firs. 
All  Oakley  land  except,  south  of  the  green,  the  four  hun- 
dred acres  of  Ascalon  Farm.  Ascalon  Farm  was  an 
unrealised  ambition  of  the  Oakley  family.  One  did  not 
quite  know  how,  but  apparently  Sir  Hugh's  great-grand- 
father, after  three  days'  indulgence  in  casino  at  Brighton, 
when  he  had  the  honour  to  lose  five  monkeys  to  the 
Regent  himself,  persuaded  the  hero  of  Trafalgar  to  agree 
to  the  breaking  of  the  entail.  An  ancestor  of  Hart,  the 
present  tenant,  bought  the  freehold  of  Ascalon  Farm: 
tempt  him,  and  threaten  him,  and  cajole  him  as  he  might, 
Sir  Hugh's  father  had  never  been  able  to  buy  it  back. 

But  Lady  Oakley  was  not  by  nature  meditative.  She 
turned  past  the  inn  and  into  the  post-office  where,  at  the 
moment,  stood  the  Knapenden  version  of  a  crowd,  one 
old  lady  drawing  her  old-age  pension,  and  two  little  girls 
sucking  jujubes.  Mr.  Balcombe  bent  forward,  affable 
and  dignified,  conscious  of  being  together  a  Civil  Servant 
and  a  member  of  the  Pharmaceutical  Society,  with  an 
air  of  "  What  can  I  do  for  you?  A  penny  stamp  or  a 
blue  pill?  " 


18  BLIND  ALLEY 

"  Good  morning,"  said  Lady  Oakley.  She  responded 
briefly  to  kind  enquiries  as  to  the  health  of  the  several 
members  of  her  family.  Profoundly  interesting,  no 
doubt.  Then,  having  bought  some  postal  orders  required 
by  benefactions,  she  added: 

"  And  I  want  some  War  Savings  stampa." 

Mr.  Balcombe  looked  dismayed  and  incredulous. 

"What!"  said  Lady  Oakley,  "you  haven't  got  any 
War  Savings  stamps!  Like  these,"  and  she  took  from 
her  large,  countrified,  pigskin  hand-bag  two  little  labels. 
The  more  notable  of  the  two  showed  hands  pouring  out 
shillings  which  by  some  mysterious  process  turned,  at 
the  bottom  of  the  stamp,  into  pink  War  Savings  booka 
and  bank  notes.  "  Turn  your  shillings  into  pounds,"  it 
urged  in  imperial  scarlet. 

"  Everybody  ought  to  use  them,"  said  Lady  Oakley. 
"  We  want  them  on  every  letter,  on  every  newspaper. 
People  who  are  not  fighting  ought  not  to  think  of  any- 
thing else." 

"  I'm  sure  I'm  very  sorry.  Your  ladyship  may  be 
sure  —  I  will  enquire  ..." 

But  Lady  Oakley's  preoccupations  took  a  different 
turn. 

"  And,  oh,  Mr.  Balcombe,  you  haven't  sent  up  the 
sanatogen.  Sir  Hugh's  missed  it  for  three  days  now,  and 
that's  not  good  for  him." 

"  I'm  very  sorry,  my  lady,"  said  the  chemist,  more 
dismayed  than  ever.  "  This  war,  you  see  ... " 

"  Oh,  yes,  yes.  I  know.  The  war.  But  surely  you 
can  get  some  sanatogen  from  London." 

Mr.  Balcombe  leant  over  the  counter  and  looked  about 
as  if  the  Defence  of  the  Realm  Act  lurked  in  the  back 
shop.  "  The  fact  is  —  I  didn't  like  to  tell  your  ladyship, 
but  sanatogen's  German." 


IN  ENGLAND  19 

Lady  Oakley  perceptibly  recoiled.  "German!  Do 
you  mean  to  say  that  .  .  . " 

She  didn't  finish  her  sentence.  Horrible  pictures  of 
poisoned  fish  and  sweets  invaded  her  mind  as  she  re- 
flected that  for  eighteen  months  of  war  Sir  Hugh's  nerves 
had  been  sustained  from  a  German  source. 

"  Yes,  my  lady.    So  I  didn't  think  it  would  do." 

"  Quite  right,  quite  right." 

"I  hear  there's  a  substitute,  quite  English,  that  one 
j> 

"  M'yes,"  said  Lady  Oakley,  with  a  shade  of  doubtful- 
ness. "  A  substitute.  Oh,  well,  we'll  see.  After  all,  I'm 
not  so  sure  it  was  doing  Sir  Hugh  as  much  good  as  all 
that.  So  much  advertised,  you  know.  Those  Germans 
get  in  everywhere." 

"  Oh,  yes,  my  lady,  especially  in  drugs.  There's  odol, 
for  instance." 

Lady  Oakley  flung  Mr.  Balcombe  a  look  in  which  was 
some  slight  malevolence.  She  herself  enjoyed  odol.  One 
had  to  be  patriotic,  but  really  it  was  very  annoying.  So 
she  felt  relieved  when  Mr.  Denny  came  into  the  shop,  for 
she  might  have  discovered  that  bread  and  beef  were 
German  too,  and  she  belonged  to  a  generation  which  has 
no  affection  for  knowledge  combined  with  inconvenience. 
"  Oh,  Mr.  Denny,"  she  said  to  the  little,  sandy-haired 
vicar,  "  I  want  to  talk  to  you." 

"  Delighted,  I'm  sure,"  said  the  vicar.  A  little  per- 
turbed by  the  feeling  that  he  might  be  indictable  for 
something,  he  hastened  to  buy  postcards,  and  refrained 
from  purchasing  drugs  which  he  considered  unmention- 
able. So,  together,  Lady  Oakley  and  the  vicar  walked 
towards  the  green.  He  was  a  quiet,  hesitating  man,  but 
behind  his  hesitation  resided  a  lively  sense  of  his  own 
rights  and  privileges;  Mr.  Denny  had  never  dropped  his 


20  BLIND  ALLEY 

bread  save  butter-side  up.  Amiable  and  broad,  he  con- 
ducted the  usual  services  on  Sunday,  and  at  other  times 
kept  the  dust  out  of  the  church  by  locking  the  door.  If 
people  did  not  communicate  often  enough,  it  was  because 
the  flesh  is  weak;  if  they  communicated  after  breakfast 
it  was  better  than  not  communicating  at  all.  For  the 
rest,  he  maintained  the  social  interests  that  befitted  his 
position,  and  was  a  passionate  stamp  collector.  Sir  Hugh 
had  once  described  him  as  every  inch  a  philatelist. 

"  What  I  wanted  to  ask,"  said  Lady  Oakley,  "  is  what 
the  Council  is  going  to  do  about  Brunswick  Cottages.  I 
say  'Paris  Cottages.'  " 

"  Well,  we  discussed  it  the  other  night,  and  of  course 
the  Council  agrees.  They  were  thinking  of  Marne  Cot- 
tages and  that  is  the  difficulty,  Lady  Oakley,  because 
there's  a  party  forming  who  wants  to  call  them  Joffre 
Cottages.  And  we  feel  a  thing  like  that  ought  not  to  be 
done  by  a  majority.  I  mean,"  and  Mr.  Denny,  with  a 
broad  wave  of  his  hand,  expressed  a  sense  of  enfolding 
brotherliness,  "  in  times  like  these  we  feel  we  must  be 
united." 

"  Nonsense,"  said  Lady  Oakley,  with  a  gleam  in  her 
brown  eye.  "  What  does  it  matter  if  we  are  united  or 
not  united  if  we  get  what  we  want?  I  say  'Paris  Cot- 
tages' because  the  postman  will  remember  it  more  easily. 
So  long  as  they're  not  called  'Brunswick  Cottages'  I  don't 
care." 

"Yes,"  said  Mr.  Denny.  "But  the  fact  is —  I 
hardly  like  to  tell  you,  but  the  real  trouble  is  that  one 
of  the  members  of  the  Council  says  it's  very  awkward 
always  to  be  changing  the  names  of  cottages  because,  as 
he  puts  it,  you  never  know." 

"  You  never  know  what?  "  asked  Lady  Oakley,  stop- 
ping. 


IN  ENGLAND  21 

"  Oh,  I'm  only  repeating  what  he  says.  He  says  that 
—  well,  in  1898,  supposing  they  had  been  called  Paris 
Cottages  and  Fashoda  had  led  to  war,  we  couldn't  have 
called  them  by  a  French  name,  could  we?  " 

"Well?" 

"  Well,  he  says  that  if  we  turn  '  Brunswick  Cottages ' 
into  '  Paris  Cottages',  if  one  of  these  days  we  have  trouble 
with  the  French  we  may  have  to  call  them  '  New  York 
Cottages/  And  he's  asking  if  we're  prepared  to  come 
down  to  '  Pekin  Row.'  "  Mr.  Denny  smiled.  He  did  not 
think  it  necessary  to  press  the  point. 

"  Who  is  this  person  who  has  so  much  imagination?  " 

"  Mr.  Cradoc." 

"  Oh,"  said  Lady  Oakley,  with  peculiar,  slow  intensity. 
"  I  ought  to  have  known  it  was  Mr.  Cradoc.  Of  course 
Mr.  Cradoc  would  have  ideas."  Lady  Oakley  under- 
lined "  ideas  ",  indicating  them  as  a  minor  form  of  obscen- 
ity. "  Well,  Mr.  Denny,"  she  went  on  quietly,  "  when 
you  see  Mr.  Cradoc  again,  you  might  ask  him  whether 
he  thinks  it  worth  while  pressing  the  point,  as  he  is  not 
very  likely  to  be  re-elected." 

"  No,  I  suppose  not,"  said  Mr.  Denny.  "  I  know  his 
views.  Most  unfortunate.  Most  unfortunate!  " 

"  It's  not  unfortunate  at  all.  It's  disgraceful.  Here's 
the  new  grocer,  an  impostor,  who's  as  good  as  ruined 
poor  Evenwood,  a  man  whom  no  one  knows  anything 
about,  a  shopman  from  Hastings,  who  comes  here  and 
preaches  disloyalty  to  people  who  have  never  thought 
of  it,  a  man  who  sits  here  making  war  profits,  sheltering 
behind  the  country's  laws  and  refusing  to  do  his  bit  in 
upholding  them.  Such  a  man,  who  makes  his  conscience 
his  protection  ..." 

Mr.  Denny  nodded  sagely  for  a  moment,  while  remin- 
iscences of  several  leading  articles  incorporated  them- 


M  BLIND  ALLEY 

selves  in  Lady  Oakley's  speech.  Then  she  fell  into  the 
vernacular. 

"  It  can't  go  on,  Mr.  Denny.  We  can't  have  it.  You 
must  speak  to  him." 

"  Oh,  how  can  I?  You  see  he  doesn't  attend  the 
church." 

"  Then  the  Church  must  go  to  him." 

Mr.  Denny  thought  this  apostolic,  but  rather  tactless, 
and  said  so,  putting  it  differently. 

"  You  must  speak  to  him,"  said  Lady  Oakley,  passing 
over  his  hesitations  as  calmly  as  a  steam-roller  over  a 
slug.  "  In  days  like  these,  it's  the  duty  of  the  Church  to 
assert  itself  and  to  send  forth  a  Message.  Those  who 
won't  hear  it  must  suffer  for  it.  Anyhow,  I  am  with- 
drawing my  account.  But  I'm  not  thinking  of  that;  we 
want  this  —  stain  removed  from  the  village.  We  want 
everybody  to  realise  that  we  have  a  magnificent  cause, 
and  that  a  man  should  be  glad  to  be  alive  to  .  .  . " 

"  Die  for  it,"  suggested  Mr.  Denny. 

Lady  Oakley  looked  at  him  with  some  haughtiness. 
She  disliked  epigrams. 

"People  are  too  much  afraid  of  dying,"  she  said. 
"Everybody  dies.  They  may  as  well  die  decently. 
They  should  be  glad  to  die  for  a  cause  like  ours.  Ah, 
I  wish  I  were  a  man!  " 

"  All  right,"  said  Mr.  Denny.  "  I'll  have  a  word  with 
him." 

Lady  Oakley  was  not  listening.  She  said  again,  with 
slow  intensity: 

"Ah,  I  wish  I  were  a  man,"  and  in  her  eyes,  that 
seemed  to  have  grown  larger  and  harder,  shone  a  light 
Amazonian.  In  that  moment  she  was  transfigured,  in- 
flamed with  thoughts  of  valorous  carnage,  of  intrepidity 
converting  the  forlorn  into  the  victorious;  the  harmonies 


IN  ENGLAND  23 

of  battle  rang  in  her  ears;  God  was  with  her  as  He  is 
mit  uns.  Then  she  was  an  Englishwoman  rather  than  a 
woman.  She  was  —  Wagnerian. 


SLOWLY  the  train  wandered  towards  the  northeast. 
Upon  the  right,  Romney  marsh  made  a  pattern  of  brown- 
ish-green tussocks  and  spears  of  shining  water.  Sir  Hugh 
took  from  his  attache  case,  which  bulged  with  papers  taken 
home  from  the  office  of  the  Southern  Board  of  Control, 
a  letter  from  Stephen.  It  was  characteristic  that  Stephen 
should  write  mainly  to  his  father.  It  was  the  usual  sort 
of  letter  from  the  front,  with  plenty  of  "  cheer  up,  we'll 
soon  be  dead  "  about  it;  the  young  man  did  not  suggest 
that  he  risked  his  life  for  any  reason  other  than  sport  or 
class  automatism.  The  parts  that  concerned  the  family, 
the  references  to  Sylvia,  to  whom  Stephen  sent  his  con- 
gratulations on  her  chucking  the  Fannies  (by  which,  he 
confided  to  his  father,  he  meant  his  condolences;  the 
Nursing  Yeomanry  having  chucked  her),  his  gibe  at 
Monica  who,  he  said,  would  doubtless  soon  marry  some 
unfortunate  young  man  who  knew  no  better,  and  set  up 
with  him  in  a  house  furnished  exclusively  with  angular 
cosy  corners  and  high  ideals,  all  this  was  just  the  pleasant, 
cheery  Stephen.  And  Sir  Hugh  did  not  even  mind  his 
message  to  Lady  Oakley,  who  had  written  to  him  saying 
we  wanted  a  Man:  "  Tell  mother  that  she  won't  get  her 
Man.  She  asks  too  much  of  a  Man  ('  Morning  Post ' 
type) .  What  she  wants  is  (1)  a  thing  that  never  thinks; 
(2)  a  thing  who,  however,  always  acts.  The  activity  of  a 
gadfly.  The  adhesive  quality  of  a  limpet.  And  a  face  fit 
to  kill  a  camera.  Briefly,  what  they  call  a  Personality." 

Queer  young  man.    How  old  they  grew  at  the  Var- 


24  BLIND  ALLEY 

sity.  Sir  Hugh  looked  out  at  Appledore  station  where, 
for  a  long  time,  they  persuaded  reluctant  horses  into  a 
van  which  they  looked  upon  as  a  trap.  He  wondered 
what  would  become  of  Stephen,  nipped  by  the  war  in  the 
middle  of  his  second  year.  He  could  not  go  back  to 
school,  which,  after  all,  was  what  Oxford  amounted  to, 
after  —  three  years,  perhaps  more,  of  this  sort  of  thing. 
Then  he  returned  to  the  letter.  Strange  chap!  Here  he 
was  telling  how,  the  other  day,  the  Boche  was  shelling 
heavily  on  the  left,  whizzbangs  mostly,  and  how,  at  a 
certain  moment,  with  a  funny  wet  sound,  there  fell  into 
the  trench,  quite  close  to  him,  the  leg  of  a  Highlander. 
Was  it  merely  side  that  made  Stephen  punctuate  this 
event  with  the  remark:  "And  a  damned  smart,  well- 
turned-out  leg  and  legging  it  was,  too!  "  and  pass  on  to 
his  difficulty  with  the  other  officers  as  to  the  regimental 
mascot :  "  Ever  since  the  Seaf orths  next  door  played 
themselves  into  their  billets  behind  a  goat,  poor  old  Sus- 
sex Coast  felt  it  must  have  a  mascot  of  its  own.  Adjutant 
in  the  chair,  blind  as  usual,  and  a  perfect  chairman. 
Didn't  make  myself  popular  that  night;  one  of  our 
latest  T.  G's.,  cockney  of  course,  said  that  being  a  coast 
regiment  we  wanted  an  animal  with  something  naval 
about  it.  I  suggested  a  tin  of  sardines.  If  we'd  been 
regulars  ^t  would  have  been  all  right,  but  the  poor  old 
3rd/5th  is  so  frightfully  cocky  about  being  in  the  army 
that  it  didn't  go  down  a  bit.  I'm  afraid  I  haven't  got  the 
right  feeling  about  this  war." 

No!  Sir  Hugh  smiled,  but  he  hardly  thought  that 
Stephen  had  the  right  feeling  about  this  war.  He  was 
always  ragging  it.  Could  that  mean  that  inside  he 
thought  it  unspeakable?  And  would  that  be  better  than 
thinking  it  glorious?  And  it  was,  Sir  Hugh  reflected,  a 
glorious  and  necessary  war,  the  war  of  light  against  dark, 


IN  ENGLAND  25 

the  cross  unsought,  but  infinitely  rewarding  to  the 
shoulders  chosen  by  fate  to  bear  it.  No,  there  was  no 
Galahad  in  this  young  man,  and  Sir  Hugh  supposed  that 
this  was  the  new  type  we  were  breeding,  as  brave  and  as 
generous  as  ever,  but  determined  to  be  airy  about  it,  as 
if  the  race  were  getting  tired  and  ashamed  of  emotion. 
Sir  Hugh  did  not  despise  emotion;  he  was  a  Victorian 
and  he  knew  it;  thrift,  the  doctrines  of  Herbert  Spencer, 
and  ill-rolled  umbrellas  did  not  offend  him;  once  upon  a 
time  he  had  worn  elastic-sided  boots,  and  he  still  read 
the  Spectator. 

So  it  was  cruel,  in  a  way,  that  a  little  later,  when  he 
reached  his  office  at  Ashford,  he  should  find  himself  in 
compulsory  contact  with  the  new  type  of  civil  servant, 
namely,  the  business  man.  Sir  Hugh  knew  that  his 
fellow  members  on  the  Board  were  far  more  useful  than 
the  civil  servant  of  the  old  school,  that  they  had  qualities 
such  as  ruthlessness  (frightfulness?),  a  fine  disregard  for 
manners,  a  contempt  for  precedent,  a  desire  to  overcome 
each  other  which  often  enabled  their  departments  to  excel 
each  other  —  and  yet  sometimes  he  regretted  the  civil 
servant  he  had  met  in  a  long  life,  that  man  of  oil,  steel, 
and  silk,  capable  of  every  delay  and  grace,  suggestive  of 
every  sympathy  and  capable  of  none,  invariably  accom- 
modating and  inevitably  elusive,  incapable  of  a  lie, 
always  capable  of  an  evasion,  determined  in  public  utility, 
yet  not  blind  to  private  advancement,  singularly  addicted 
to  justice,  yet  unable  to  suffer  mercy,  not  a  man,  butta 
theorem,  a  diagram,  a  syllogism.  No  good!  Scrap  the 
old  machine  which  once  went  so  gently  —  backwards  — 
and  out  with  the  new  machine,  puffing  and  pounding  and 
tearing  up  the  old  rails,  swiftly  moving  forward  to  — 
well,  perhaps  to  the  dogs. 

Often  that  day  the  thought  of  Stephen,  so  much  the 


26  BLIND  ALLEY 

tail  end  of  a  race,  the  last  of  the  gentlemen,  too  disdain- 
ful to  use  the  intellect  that  had  pitched  on  him  as  unex- 
pectedly as  the  egg  of  a  cuckoo  appears  in  the  nest  of  a 
wren.  He  compared  him  with  those  others,  with  Calvert, 
whose  name  was  a  household  word  in  cement  circles,  with 
Holmes,  who  had  created  a  vast  fortune  on  an  advertise- 
ment advising  mankind  to  "  Japan  your  Pan."  What 
was  going  to  become  of  them?  Where  were  they  going 
to  stand  after  the  war,  in  the  political  body  of  this  dear, 
dusty  old  England?  It  was  all  right  during  the  war, 
when  the  old  lady  was  excited,  indulging  in  a  sort  of 
colossal  rummage  sale.  Just  now  the  row  suited  the  old 
lady.  But  after?  When  she  wanted  to  settle  down 
again  on  her  customary  settee?  She'd  engaged  a  new 
kind  of  manager,  a  cross  between  an  American  commer- 
cial traveller  and  a  Syrian  carpet  merchant.  She 
couldn't  turn  him  out  and  call  back  the  first  division  of 
the  civil  service  to  let  her  alone.  Poor  old  lady!  Her 
business  men  in  power  were  going  to  stay  in  power,  be- 
cause power  is  what  they  seek.  After  the  war  they 
would  control  her,  regulate  her  and  order  her  about  in 
council.  Sir  Hugh  sighed  as  he  thought  of  the  business 
man  making  old  England  hop.  Or,  as  Holmes  put  it,  'op. 
As,  later  in  the  evening,  he  took  the  train  home,  he 
noticed  the  newspaper  of  one  of  England's  leading  busi- 
ness men.  It  had  just  produced  a  placard  of  which  it 
obviously  was  proud: 

"YOU 
POTSDAM 
SCOUNDREL." 

An  excellent  sentiment,  thought  Sir  Hugh,  but  —  in  what 
elegant  terms  our  messages  we  couch! 


IN  ENGLAND  27 

VI 

MR.  DENNY  was  a  good  man.  That  is,  he  never  did 
any  harm  to  anybody,  and  he  always  acted  for  the  best 
according  to  his  rushlights.  He  realised  that,  though  he 
was  pastor  of  his  flock,  and  depended  not  at  all  upon  the 
squire,  still,  if  he  agreed  with  Lady  Oakley,  there  was 
no  harm  in  doing  what  Lady  Oakley  wished.  He  be- 
longed to  the  Church  of  England,  and  found  it  easy  to 
think  in  compromises.  So  he  disliked  speaking  to 
Cradoc,  having  to  take  up  an  attitude  of  definite  con- 
demnation. He  would  have  preferred  disapprovingly  to 
condone.  Still,  there  it  was,  and  his  deeds  formulated 
his  disposition,  for  in  the  end  he  did  not  seek  out  the 
conscientious  objector:  as  he  went  along  the  village  street 
he  found  his  attention  attracted  by  the  smell  of  burning 
coffee.  «  Ah,"  said  Mr.  Denny  to  himself,  "  that's  Mr. 
Cradoc  roasting  coffee.  That  reminds  me  that  Lady 
Oakley  said  I  must  talk  to  him."  And,  quite  honestly 
thinking  that  this  little  fact  had  reminded  him  of  the 
duty  which  had  actually  been  oppressing  him  for  several 
hours,  Mr.  Denny  went  into  the  shop.  Cradoc  looked  at 
him  with  a  certain  surprise.  He  was  a  small,  thinnish 
man,  with  black  hair,  a  ragged  moustache,  and  the  air 
of  taut  determination  which  often  sits  upon  people  who 
have  nourished  their  spirit  and  neglected  their  body. 

"  What  can  I  do  for  you?  "  asked  Cradoc,  with  a  lift 
in  his  voice  that  meant:  "  I  suppose  you  don't  want  a 
driver's  Jelly;  it  must  be  my  soul  you're  after." 

"  Oh,"  said  Mr.  Denny,  "  I  was  just  passing  ..." 

Cradoc  looked  at  him  thoughtfully.  He  was  not 
accustomed  to  visits  from  the  clergy,  though  he  had  often 
exchanged  a  word  with  Mr.  Denny.  He  was  embar- 
rassed because  he  found  it  difficult  to  understand  that  a 


28  BLIND  ALLEY 

man  could  believe  in  an  all-powerful  creative  God;  so 
the  only  way  in  which  he  could  talk  to  a  clergyman  was 
to  humour  him,  as  one  does  the  inoffensive  insane. 

"  Oh,  yes,"  said  Cradoc.  Then,  feeling  discussions 
imminent,  he  called  to  his  sister  to  mind  the  shop  and 
asked  Mr.  Denny  to  step  into  the  parlour. 

Mr.  Denny  automatically  took  the  central  position  on 
the  hearthrug  and  stared  at  this  parlour.  A  disquieting 
place  rather,  with  its  whitewashed  walls,  its  two  or  three 
autotypes  framed  in  oak,  a  rather  upsetting  picture  of 
Bernard  Shaw  by  Joseph  Simpson,  red  tie  and  all,  a  large 
labour  poster  after  Steinlen,  a  rack  filled  with  books 
which  were  probably  not  the  "  hundred  best  ",  surmounted 
by  a  very  regrettable  nude. 

"  The  fact  is,"  said  Mr.  Denny,  "  I  wanted  to  have  a 
few  words  with  you,  Mr.  Cradoc,  if  you  don't  think  it  an 
impertinence." 

The  grocer  made  conciliatory  sounds. 

"  It  was  —  er  —  I  mean  —  er  —  this  military  service 
business.  Compulsion,  you  know." 

"  Yes,"  said  Cradoc. 

"  I  mean,  it  has  —  well,  changed  everything." 

"  Yes,"  said  Cradoc. 

Mr.  Denny  found  it  desirable  to  become  breezy:  "  I've 
been  hearing  about  your  views  and  — er  —  it's  not  for 
me  to  criticise  them;  every  man  for  his  conscience,  every 
man  for  his  conscience,  even  though  it  does  make  cow- 
ards of  us  all."  He  stopped,  for  Cradoc  had  grinned  at 
this.  "  Ahem,"  reflected  Mr.  Denny,  "  I  didn't  mean  to 
put  it  like  that."  So,  hurriedly,  he  went  on:  "  I've  been 
told  that  you  have  a  conscientious  objection  to  war. 
Well,  so  have  I,  so  have  I.  I  mean,  any  Christian  would 
conscientiously  object  to  war;  only  there  are  circum- 
stances which  alter  the  most  profound  convictions." 


IN  ENGLAND  29 

"  Can  they  be  so  profound  if  they  alter? "  asked 
Cradoc. 

"  Well,  let  us  not  say  convictions,  let  us  say  —  predilec- 
tions. I  quite  understand  that  a  right-thinking  mind 
objects  to  killing.  I  know,"  added  Mr.  Denny  in  a  tone 
of  extensive  tolerance  for  that  book,  "  that  in  the  Bible 
you  will  find  a  commandment  that  you  should  not  kill 
but  —  er  —  one  might  be  too  literal  in  the  interpretation 
of  what  is  revealed." 

"  In  other  words,  one  should  interpret  it  as  suits  one." 

"  I  said  no  such  thing.  Only  there  are  necessary  ex- 
ceptions to  the  most  golden  rules." 

"  I'm  afraid  not." 

For  a  moment  the  two  men  looked  at  each  other,  trying 
to  find  a  meeting  ground,  the  conscientious  objector  so 
entirely  confined  within  the  rigidities  of  his  own  views 
that  his  conception  of  personal  liberty  placed  him  in 
handcuffs,  the  cleric  so  determined  to  scrape  what  good- 
ness he  could  from  a  rebellious  world  that  he  found  him- 
self lost  in  it,  like  a  fly  in  gelatine.  Then  Mr.  Denny 
returned  to  the  charge. 

"  I  quite  understand  that  your  spiritual  principles  — 
oh,  you  need  not  shake  your  head  —  we  all  have  spiritual 
principles,  even  if,  like  you,  some  people  are  a  little 
undenominational . ' ' 

"I  am  an  atheist,"  said  Cradoc.  "But  go  on,  Mr. 
Denny." 

"  A  very  big  word,  but  we're  not  talking  of  religion. 
What  I  wanted  to  suggest  is  that  compulsion  has  altered 
things,  because  now  it  is  no  longer  a  question  of  who  will 
enlist  and  who  will  not.  Everybody  has  to  go." 

"  Except  me,"  said  Cradoc. 

"  My  dear  sir !  You  can't  do  that,  you  really  can't  do 
that." 


30  BLIND  ALLEY 

"A  better  man  than  I  had  conscientious  objections  to 
a  certain  religious  system  nineteen  centuries  ago,  Mr. 
Denny." 

"  Please  don't  be  blasphemous." 

"  I'm  being  historical ;  those  may  be  synonymous 
terms." 

"  I've  already  said  we  are  not  talking  about  religion, 
but  I  should  like  to  point  out  that  in  the  Thirty-Nine 
Articles  which  are  in  your  prayer  book  you  will  find  that 
the  Church  allows  the  faithful  to  engage  in  wars." 

"  In  the  name  of  universal  love?  " 

"  Love  should  not  be  taken  literally.  Love  must  be 
interpreted  as  it  is  by  the  father  who  is  compelled  to  chas- 
tise his  child.  I  quite  agree,  Mr.  Cradoc,  that  you  should 
love  your  enemies  ..." 

"But  hate  a  Frenchman  like  poison,  as  Lord  Nelson 
said.  I'm  afraid,  Mr.  Denny,  that  this  remark  of  his 
lordship  was  rather  unfortunate  in  the  light  of  present 
alliances." 

"  Oh,  circumstances  change  with  time.  That  was  a 
very  regrettable  period." 

"  Still,  we  cannot  ignore  it.  To  me  our  dependence  on 
Blucher  sterilises  our  present  dependence  upon  Joffre. 
Changing  enemies  and  changing  friends  deprive  one  of 
belief  in  either." 

"  Are  these  matters  not  a  little  deep?  "  said  Mr.  Denny. 
"  Is  not  our  case  much  simpler,  I  might  say  much  purer, 
than  anything  such  musty,  historical  arguments  can  sug- 
gest? Here  we  are,  entirely  unprepared  for  war  ..." 

"  With  our  fleet  fully  mobilized." 

"  For  defence  only.  Compelled  by  a  solemn  engage- 
ment to  protect  Belgium  against  aggression  ..." 

"  An  obligation  which  we  ignored  in  the  case  of  Den- 
mark." 


IN  ENGLAND  31 

"  Faced  by  a  brutal  autocracy  determined  to  enforce 
the  lowest  forms  of  materialism  upon  the  world  ..." 

"  A  world  at  present  dignified  by  the  highest  forms  of 
spirituality  as  exhibited  in  our  machine  shops,  our  daily 
press  and  our  streetwalkers." 

Mr.  Denny  paused.  "  I  do  think  it's  a  pity  we  should 
wrangle  like  this.  Let  me  put  it  to  you  more  simply. 
When  you  see  the  other  men  forsake  their  wives,  their 
children,  their  sweethearts,  their  little  businesses,  throw- 
ing all  up  at  the  behest  of  a  generous  impulse,  going  out 
to  do  their  bit,  can  you  bear  to  be  left  behind?  " 

Mr.  Denny  made  a  gesture  of  appeal,  and  was  entirely 
honest  in  his  emotion;  he  longed  to  lead  Cradoc  to  the 
recruiting  station  quite  as  much  as  he  would  have  liked 
to  bring  him  to  salvation.  But  Cradoc  shook  his  head. 

"  No,  I'm  afraid  not.  Don't  worry  about  me,  Mr. 
Denny ;  it  would  be  no  use  being  an  Israelite  unless  there 
were  a  few  Ishmaelites.  I've  got  to  be  one  of  those. 
Crucify  me.  I  shall  not  mind  it  as  much  as  you  think,  it 
will  please  my  vanity ;  it  would  be  as  much  fun  as  being  a 
Christian  martyr." 

"I  don't  understand  you  at  all.  There's  no  idea  of 
ill-treating  you.  I  am  merely  suggesting  that  if  you 
maintain  this  attitude  you  will  find  yourself  a  social  out- 
cast; you  will  stand  beyond  the  pale  as  the  man  who  re- 
fused to  take  up  arms  in  a  just  cause  while  sheltering  be- 
hind the  bayonets  of  those  who  went  —  Lady  Oakley  says 
she  will  stop  dealing  with  you  and  go  back  to  Mr.  Even- 
wood,  even  though  his  son  is,  I'm  afraid,  rather  wild." 

Cradoc  shook  his  head.  "  No,  it's  no  good,  Mr.  Denny. 
I'm  not  going.  I'm  not  going  to  do  anything.  I'm  not 
going  to  make  munitions  for  other  men  to  blow  one  an- 
other to  pieces  with  and  pretend  I've  nothing  to  do  with 
the  war.  I'm  not  going  to  the  ambulances  to  patch  them 


32  BLIND  ALLEY 

together  so  that  they  may  go  on  killing  one  another.  I'm 
not  going  to  do  anything  except  register  my  protest.  You 
may  say  that's  no  good.  That's  because  I'm  in  the 
minority.  When  I  am  in  the  majority  I  shall  be  right. 
It  is  sometimes  expedient  that  a  man  should  die  for  the 
people." 

"  Don't  be  rhetorical,"  said  Mr.  Denny.  And  he  went 
away,  his  kindly  heart  rather  heavy  because  this  difficult, 
rebellious  man,  who  thought  wrong  and  felt  wrong,  must 
suffer,  and  because  Mr.  Denny  hated  anybody  to  suffer. 
He  preached  a  religion  of  mortification  and  pain,  but  he 
practised  a  life  where  he  sought  to  shed  upon  all  men  so 
much  comfort  and  good  cheer  as  he  could  muster. 

VII 

"  FATHER,"  said  Monica,  as  she  gently  closed  the  study 
door,  "  may  I  speak  to  you?  " 

He  looked  up,  and  as  he  said  vaguely :  "  Yes,  what  is 
it,  dear?  "  found  himself  thinking  of  her  in  an  abstract 
way.  His  daughter,  but  what  a  stranger  somehow,  this 
young  woman  of  twenty-six,  so  warmly  pale,  with  grey 
eyes  that  might  be  soft  or  ironic,  and  the  broad  mouth, 
made  to  smile  for  love  or  droop  for  tears.  She  looked 
very  tall  that  night;  her  white  arms  seemed  thin;  the 
frock  that  hung,  precariously  it  seemed,  from  her  deli- 
cately thin  shoulders  by  two  straps  of  silver  and  sapphire, 
fell  in  straight,  soft  folds,  unbroken  by  a  belt,  to  the 
silken  blue  insteps  in  the  silver  shoes.  As  upon  his  desk 
the  snake  reading-lamp  was  turned  down  to  keep  the 
light  from  his  eyes,  Monica  in  the  shadow  was  as  a  ghost 
imprisoned  in  a  moonbeam,  in  that  long  frock  of  silvery 
crepe  chiffon,  through  which  here  and  there  gleamed  a 
bright  panel  of  blue  charmeuse. 


IN  ENGLAND  33 

Monica  came  a  little  closer  and,  for  a  moment,  as  if 
shy,  tickled  behind  a  furry  ear  Kallikrates,  who  sat  upon 
the  desk.  The  cat  swelled  voluptuously  under  the  caress, 
hunching  up  the  mossy  gold  of  his  shoulder  against  that 
thin  hand,  like  a  spray  of  fern,  with  the  finger  nails  of 
sepia  pink.  "  Father,"  said  Monica  at  last,  "  I  want  to 
go  into  munitions." 

"You  —  oh,  what  put  that  into  your  head?  " 

"  Well,  I  want  to  do  something." 

"Yes,  I  quite  see."  Sir  Hugh  was  embarrassed;  he 
realised  that  Monica  should  do  something,  but  now  that 
she  wanted  to,  an  old  instinct  dictated  that  no  Oakley 
girl  ever  did  anything,  cried  out  against  the  rape  of  war. 
So  he  temporised. 

"  I  quite  agree  with  you;  everybody  who  can  do  any- 
thing ought  to.  Still  —  it's  very  hard  work,  you  know, 
and  —  er  —  there  are  other  things." 

"  What  sort  of  things?  " 

"  Well,  the  girls  are  rather  rough." 

"  Do  you  think  they  would  be  nasty  to  me?  " 

"  No,  of  course  not.  Quite  good  sorts,  I'm  sure,  but 
not  exactly  your  sort." 

"  It  takes  all  sorts  to  make  a  war,"  said  Monica, 
smiling. 

Sir  Hugh  sighed.  Yes,  indeed.  But  still  the  instinct 
bade  him  struggle.  "  Couldn't  you  do  something  else?  " 

"  What  else  could  I  do,  Father?  " 

"  Oh,  I  don't  know.  There  are  such  lots  of  things  a 
girl  can  do  now,  canteens  or  —  er,  Red  Cross  depots  want 
people.  Perhaps  you  might  even  get  into  a  government 
office.  There  might  be  room  in  the  Board  at  Ashford." 
Monica  bent  forward  suddenly  and  kissed  him  on  the 
forehead. 

"  Dear  old  Daddy !  "  she  murmured.   "  What  a  schemer 


34  BLIND  ALLEY 

you  are.  Here  you  are  trying  to  tie  me  up  in  Ashford 
because  it's  only  half  an  hour  away,  and  you  don't  know 
you're  doing  it.  You  want  me  to  do  something  real,  but 
you'd  like  me  to  do  it  at  Knapenden,  wouldn't  you?  " 

"  Yes,  I  would,"  said  Sir  Hugh  with  sudden  courage. 
"  I'm  a  silly  old  man,  Monica,  and  like  all  silly  old  men, 
I'm  making  a  fool  of  myself  over  a  young  girl.  But, 
seriously,  do  you  really  want  to  do  this?  You've  done 
other  things." 

"  Oh,  yes,  I  know.  Last  year  I  worked  at  the  relief 
centre.  But  all  the  Belgians  have  had  all  their  babies; 
at  least,  I  hope  so.  Anyhow,  they've  mostly  gone  north 
to  become  profiteers." 

"  Well,  you  help  me  quite  a  lot." 

Monica  smiled  and  counted  on  her  fingers:  "(1)>  to 
have  answered  seventeen  letters  saying  that  the  matter 
will  have  urgent  consideration  (which  it  hasn't) ;  (2) ,  to 
have  driven  father  every  morning  into  Rye  (and  twice 
into  a  ditch) ;  (3) ,  to  have  taken  part  in  the  economy 
campaign  at  Rye  (and  felt  so  exhausted  that  I  had  to 
ask  another  economiser  to  lunch  at  the  l  Mermaid '  and 
spent  eleven-and-three) ." 

Sir  Hugh  laughed.  "  No,  you  don't  sound  lucky  but 
—  I  insist  on  being  serious.  Do  you  really  want  to  work 
eight  hours  a  day?  And  get  your  fingers  stained  with 
T.  N.  T.?  And  wear  a  mob  cap  and  trousers?  " 

"  Trousers !  "  said  Monica  raptly.  "  Father,  you've 
lost  your  case.  It  was  only  when  women  began  to  wear 
trousers  that  men  said  women  were  splendid.  How  very 
vain  of  them!  Father,  you've  done  it.  And  now  that 
you  are  down  I  will  leap  upon  you  and  finish  you.  Your 
Board  of  Control  is  in  touch  with  all  sorts  of  munition 
works.  You  know  Mr.  Irvine,  the  manager,  very  well. 
You've  been  seen  lunching  with  important  personages 


IN  ENGLAND  35 

at  the  '  Bull.'  I  have  reason  to  think  that  lots  of  them 
will  be  pleased  to  oblige  you  by  engaging  a  new  hand 
called  Oakley." 

"  Oh,  dear,  oh,  dear,"  murmured  Sir  Hugh.  "  How  very 
different  you  are  from  the  girls  I  used  to  know!  In  my 
time  the  young  generation  never  grew  old." 

"  That's  what  happened  to  you,  Daddy.  But  now  for 
it!  Take  a  nice,  clean  sheet  of  paper  and  write  a  letter 
to  somebody,  and  give  it  to  me  to  post  because  you're 
quite  young  enough  to  be  a  deceiver,  and,  if  you  please, 
I'll  post  it  myself." 

"  Monica,"  said  Sir  Hugh  peevishly,  "  I  won't  be 
hustled." 

"  Don't  be  selfish ;  you've  been  having  an  awfully  good 
time  during  this  war." 

"What!  "  cried  Sir  Hugh  indignantly. 

"  Yes,  you  have.  When  the  war  broke  out  you  had 
retired  from  the  bank;  you  had  nothing  to  do;  yes,  I 
know  you  attended  sessions,  and  looked  after  the  County 
Council's  money,  say  twopence  a  year,  and  you  wrote 
papers  for  the  Institute  of  Bankers,  so  called  because  no 
bankers  attend  its  meetings  —  but  now!  You've  been 
all  over  the  country  recruiting  hard,  and  there  wouldn't 
have  been  a  Derby  scheme  in  Sussex  but  for  you,  and 
you've  organised  dozens  of  committees  for  the  Belgians, 
and  the  Serbians,  and  the  sailors,  and  the  washerwomen 
who  have  seen  better  days;  you've  founded  three  kitch- 
ens, two  hospitals  and  you  ..." 

"  Spare  me !  "  cried  Sir  Hugh.  "  Go  away,  or  I'll  set 
the  cat  at  you." 

"  Please,  Father,  a  clean  sheet  of  paper." 

"No,  no,  no,  not  to-night.  Leave  the  room,  Miss," 
and  as  Monica  sat  down  on  his  desk  Sir  Hugh  jumped  up, 
seized  her  by  her  silken  waist  and  proceeded  to  drag 


36  BLIND  ALLEY 

her  out  of  the  room.  There  was  a  fierce  struggle  during 
which  cushions  were  thrown,  a  pile  of  blue  books  overset. 
At  last,  laughing  and  panting,  Sir  Hugh  closed  the  door 
upon  a  creature  that  banged  and  kicked  the  panels, 
loudly  shouting:  "Votes  for  women!  " 

When  the  noise  subsided  Sir  Hugh  came  back  and 
induced  Kallikrates  to  show  the  blunt  end  of  his  nose 
from  under  the  bookcase,  whence  he  at  last  came  out, 
dragged  by  neck  and  tail,  in  a  filthy  condition,  and  look- 
ing as  if  he  thought  the  war  would  last  seven  years.  Sir 
Hugh  for  a  long  time  remained  seated  at  his  desk.  He 
was  very  undecided.  He  tried  to  return  to  his  work,  took 
up  a  letter  from  Stephen,  a  queer,  horrible  letter  where 
the  boy  described  with  a  sort  of  gusto  how  a  German 
attack  had  been  broken  by  machine-gun  fire: 

"  You  should  have  seen  them  come  up.  They  had  to 
cross  a  little  rise,  and  then  every  line  w^s  like  a  grey 
wave  coming  right  out  of  the  ground.  And  all  the 
machine  guns  were  trained  on  that  rise.  Just  for  a 
moment  you  saw  a  wave,  and  as  the  guns  swept  from 
left  to  right  the  wave  crumbled  away  from  left  to  right, 
like  ninepins  knocking  each  other  down,  and  as  one  wave 
fell  you  could  see  another  one  form  behind  it  and  fall 
away  while  a  third  one  arose.  It  was  a  ripping  morning 
except  that  my  batman  couldn't  find  the  tin-opener." 

Also  they  had  caught  a  spy,  and  Stephen  had  had  a 
long  talk  with  him  before  they  shot  him.  Queer  sort  of 
spy  evidently,  a  London  clerk  who  had  taken  up  spying 
for  the  Germans  because  he  liked  making  himself  up 
with  whiskers,  and  slinking  round  corners,  and  overhear- 
ing footsteps,  as  he  called  it.  Adventure! 

"  Funny  sort  of  chap.  He  said  to  me:  '  You're  a  gen- 
tleman, you  don't  understand.  You  don't  know  what 
it's  like,  nine  till  six  every  damned  day  of  your  life.  And 


IN  ENGLAND  37 

saying  "  Sir."  And  being  rowed  if  you  take  more  than 
an  hour  for  lunch.  And  knowing  you're  just  a  bit  of 
dirt.  And  then  some  one  comes  along  and  says  to  you: 
"  Look  here,  my  fine  fellow,  wouldn't  you  like  to  be  a 
sporting  cuss?  The  sort  you  see  on  the  movies,  or  in 
those  books  on  the  bookstalls  by  William  le  Queux." 
Saving  your  country  or  doing  it  down,  it's  much  the  same ; 
whenever  you  save  one  country  you  do  down  another. 
And  being  patted  on  the  back  by  generals,  and  having 
dreams  about  getting  out  of  palaces  through  the  drains. 
That's  life!7" 

Then  Stephen  had  broken  off,  saying:  "  I  don't  know 
why  I  tell  you  all  this.  I'm  making  up  half  of  it,  I  sup- 
pose. I  must  have  been  reading  R.  L.  Stevenson,  or  that 
sort  of  romantic  tripe.'7 

But  all  through  Sir  Hugh  was  haunted  by  that  vision 
of  his  long,  slim  daughter  in  an  overall,  with  her  finger 
nails  worn  close,  her  soft  cheeks  touched  with  dermatitis, 
and  the  infinitely  sweet  thing  that  fluttered  within  her 
coarsened.  A  rebellious  rage  rose  in  him.  Must  war 
then  take  them  all?  Young  men  and  young  girls?  To 
slay  them  or  scar  them?  Must  indeed  war  breathe  upon 
their  star  and  detach  their  wings?  He  slept  ill,  rose  a 
little  after  dawn  and  walked  along  the  ridge  to  Udimore 
copse  where  all  was  grey  and  lonely.  On  this  soft  morn- 
ing of  late  February  the  birches  were  still  bare,  but  some 
patches  of  silver  bark  shone  like  soiled  mirrors.  Over 
the  marsh  the  sun  was  breaking  in  the  dun  mist;  he  saw 
it  rise  weary  and  pale  from  the  eastern  downs,  lazily,  as 
from  a  lover's  bed.  Already,  something  of  spring  was 
in  the  air;  the  primroses  that  in  another  month  would 
cluster  so  eagerly  that  here  he  would  not  dare  tread,  were 
shooting  out  little  green  leaves  still  moist  with  birth.  A 
sweet,  wet  smell  rose  from  the  thawing  earth.  He  was 


38  BLIND  ALLEY 

in  the  midst  of  life,  that  rebelliously  rises  even  from 
graveyards.  It  comforted  him  to  feel  this.  He  thought: 
"  Yes,  I  suppose  she  must  go.  She  will  come  back,  come 
back  as  surely  as  next  year,  happen  what  may  in  that 
insignificant  thing  they  call  the  great  world,  just  as  will 
the  daughters  of  the  primroses  which  now  lie  concealed 
under  my  feet." 

For  a  moment  he  gave  way  to  a  favourite  amusement, 
for  Sir  Hugh  was  a  true  male  and  still  very  much  an  old 
half  blue  and  an  old  volunteer  officer:  in  his  mind  he 
landed  troops  on  the  east  side  of  the  Rother,  threw  his 
sappers  and  their  bridges  across  the  dykes,  stormed 
Winchsea  Hill  and  crowned  it  with  machine  guns  —  and 
he  manoeuvred  his  forces,  cavalry  dismounting,  infantry 
digging  themselves  in  beside  the  hedges.  He  smiled  as 
he  thought  of  his  heavy  howitzers  safely  concealed  in 
the  valley,  well  beyond  Brede. 

And,  swinging  his  stick,  in  the  morning  that  shone  and 
the  sun  that  beat  into  his  eyes  from  the  yellow  ridge 
road,  too  conscious  of  warm  light  and  moist  life  to  feel 
the  misery  that  lives  between  four  walls,  he  walked  away 
towards  Knapenden  whistling:  "  The  British  Grena- 
diers." 

VIII 

MONICA  leant  out  of  her  sitting-room  window.  A  little 
exultation  was  upon  her.  Her  sitting-room  window,  hers, 
her  own,  her  first.  She  occupied  the  first  floor  of  a  large 
house  in  Castle  Hill,  Rochester.  Before  her  stood  the 
grey,  ruined  castle,  clad  with  ivy  about  its  middle,  like 
some  old,  weary  gladiator  in  a  leopard  skin.  But  she 
thought  little  of  the  old  steeple,  or  of  the  brown  Medway 
which  lay  before  her,  riven  by  little  wharfs,  of  crowding 
Strood,  across  the  bridge,  or  the  swelling  downs  that 


IN  ENGLAND  39 

rolled  away  towards  the  west.  In  that  moment  her 
youth  was  all  egotism.  She  had  flung  off  the  mood  of  the 
morning,  when  she  had  felt  for  Sir  Hugh  who  had  in- 
sisted on  taking  her  to  Rochester  himself,  but  didn't 
like  to  tell  her  how  unhappy  he  was.  Instead  of  that 
he  had  brutally  abused  the  pacifism  of  President  Wilson, 
used  words  such  as  coward  and  hypocrite  which  were 
unusual  in  his  mouth.  He  had  declaimed  against  the 
Admiralty  because  the  Arethusa  was  sunk,  conjured  up 
awful  perils:  "Here's  Austria  streaming  through  Mon- 
tenegro ;  it'll  be  Albania  next,  and  then  Greece ;  we  can't 
stop  them.  And  there's  Verdun.  Douaumont  came 
down  yesterday. 

"  The  French  are  cracking  up.  They'll  rat.  I  feel  it  in 
my  bones,  they'll  rat.  And  we  don't  move.  We  talk  of 
our  offensive  and  we  don't  move." 

For  one  moment  Monica  thought  of  him,  and  then  he 
was  expelled  by  the  infinitely  more  vivid  first  day  at 
the  Cottenham  Works,  by  the  exciting  experience  of  eight 
hours  in  a  real  munitions  works,  among  real  explosives. 
It  had  all  been  so  lovely  and  dangerous,  and  exciting, 
being  searched  for  keys  and  knives,  and  the  funny  felt 
shoes  in  which  her  feet  waggled,  and  all  those  posters 
about  cleaning  your  teeth,  and  not  eating  your  food  with 
soiled  hands.  "  Poison !  "  she  whispered  to  herself,  and 
with  an  exquisite  childish  pride  she  held  up  to  the  fading 
light  fingers  upon  which  already  rested  a  thin  film  of 
yellow  stain. 

IX 

OUTSIDE  the  King's  Arms,  on  this  moonless  March 
night,  darkness  was  complete.  Along  the  drawn  blinds 
showed  only  narrow  strips  of  light.  So  Mr.  Barry  felt 
his  way  in  and  for  a  moment  stood  dazed  as  he  entered 


40  BLIND  ALLEY 

the  misty  brightness  of  the  hot  tap  room.  Half  a  dozen 
men  sat  on  the  rough  benches  before  tall  tankards  of  ale. 
There  were  little  pools  of  beer  on  the  sanded  floor.  And 
much  smoke  rising  from  the  short  pipes.  A  little  hoarse 
laughter  and  not  much  talk.  "Hullo,  here's  Tom!" 
said  a  voice,  "  What's  yours,  old  cock?  " 

Mr.  Barry  went  to  the  bar  to  give  his  order  to  Mr. 
Cashel,  who  stood  in  his  customary  attitude,  polishing  a 
glass  with  a  piece  of  chamois  leather,  an  unexpectedly 
neat  and  respectable  little  man.  Not  far  off  stood  one 
of  the  seven  Misses  Cashel.  Mr.  Cashel's  daughters  had 
been  planned  by  Providence  to  supply  a  barmaid  every 
day  of  the  week,  though  signs  of  the  times  suggested  that 
very  soon  the  seventh  day  might  require  no  Hebe.  (There 
was  little  danger  that  male  enterprise  would  upset  the 
Providential  scheme.  One.  had  only  to  consider  the 
Misses  Cashel  to  understand  that  temptation  does  not 
lurk  everywhere;  few  were  the  chances  that  any  of  them 
would  forsake  the  bar  for  the  altar  rail.) 

Mr.  Barry  joined  the  men  at  the  table,  Mr.  Hart,  of 
Ascalon  Farm,  and  Mr.  Abbey,  the  draper,  who,  though 
a  leading  tradesman,  could  afford  to  frequent  the  King's 
Arms  because  he  was  a  bachelor  and  a  dog.  With  them 
sat  Port,  who  farmed  Ballagher's,  while  at  the  very  end 
of  the  room,  at  another  table,  sat  three  old  labourers, 
furrowed  with  age  and  crusted  with  earth,  who  sucked 
their  clay  pipes,  nodding  a  little  over  their  tankards, 
their  ears  respectfully  open  to  the  conversation  of  their 
superiors.  It  was  not  much,  this  conversation,  for  all 
knew  that  in  a  village  everything  one  says  is  to-morrow 
known  to  everybody,  and  so  when  Port  asked  Mr.  Barry 
how  the  cycle  shop  was  going,  he  expected  nothing  more 
than  the  defensive  reply: 

"  Sold  a  penn'orth  of  tintacks  to-day." 


IN  ENGLAND  41 

If  Mr.  Barry  had  replied  otherwise  he  would  have 
feared  that  somebody  would  raise  his  rent. 

And  still  Mr.  Cashel  polished  that  tumbler  with 
chamois  leather.  After  a  moment  the  guarded  conver- 
sation was  resumed. 

"I'm  glad  I  ain't  got  a  son,"  said  Hart.  "A  girl's 
trouble  enough,  but  in  these  days  if  you've  got  a  son  and 
want  to  stick  to  him  it's  as  if  you'd  burgled  a  church. 
Though  when  I  come  to  think  of  it,  girls  ..."  He 
was  a  very  large,  red  man,  with  cheeks  that  hung  a  little 
on  his  soiled  linen  collar.  He  did  not  look  like  the  pros- 
perous farmer  he  was,  but  more  like  a  bankrupt  book- 
maker who  has  taken  to  backing  horses. 

"  Well,"  said  Port,  "  let  'em  say,  that's  what  I  say;  let 
'em  say.  My  boys  ain't  going." 

"Will  you  march  too  or  wait  till  March  2?  "  asked 
Mr.  Abbey,  with  an  air  of  infinite  doggishness.  Mr.  Port 
brought  his  fist  down  upon  the  table ;  his  fine  eyes  shone, 
and  his  short  grey  beard  seemed  to  stick  out  with  inten- 
sity. 

"  They  ain't  going  to  march.  Dammun!  I  say,  they 
ain't  going.  Farm  wants  'em  and  farm'll  'ave  'em,  that's 
what  I  say." 

"  It's  all  very  well,  Mr.  Port,"  said  Barry,  "  but  you've 
got  to  think  of  the  country." 

"  I  am  thinking  of  the  country,"  said  Mr.  Port. 
"  Ain't  this  the  country?  The  country  wants  men.  Well, 
we've  got  the  men  and  we'll  damn  well  keep  'em.  I'm 
going  to  appeal,  that's  what  I'm  going  to  do,  and  they 
can  say  what  they  like.  Let  'em  say,  that's  what  I  say." 

For  a  moment  debate  seemed  imminent,  and  the  three 
old  labourers,  holding  their  pipes  high,  stared  at  their 
masters  seriously,  as  if  they  were  being  educated  in  the 
problems  of  the  day. 


42  BLIND   ALLEY 

Then  Mr.  Cashel  was  appealed  to.  "Well,  gentle- 
men," he  said  (polish,  polish) ,  "  of  course  we've  got  to 
get  the  men.  Nobody  says  we  can  do  without  the  men. 
We've  got  to  win  this  war.  But,  of  course,  the  land's 
got  to  be  looked  after.  We've  got  to  get  the  men  for  the 
land  too.  I'm  glad  to  think  that  some  have  gone  already. 
But,  of  course,  some  have  got  to  stay." 

"  'Ear,  'ear/'  said  a  small,  sandy  man  who  was  sitting 
alone.  And  after  a  moment's  hesitation  a  chorus  of 
"  'ear,  'ear "  arose.  It  was  felt  that  Mr.  Cashel  had 
ideally  expressed  the  intermediate  position,  and  that 
nobody  need  hesitate  to  enter  his  public  house  on  account 
of  his  views.  But  Mr.  Keele,  a  rather  bitter-looking  man 
with  grey  side  whiskers  and  the  air  of  a  methodist  so 
common  in  this  corner  of  Kentish  Sussex,  spoke: 

"  It's  all  very  well  your  talking,  all  of  you.  Your  boys 
like  the  land.  Not  like  my  fine  la-di-da  gentleman.  He 
don't  want  to  stay.  Gadding  and  gallivanting  in  Hast- 
ings, that's  more  like  it.  Just  like  the  others.  The  last 
and  the  worst." 

"  Oh,  yes,"  said  Mr.  Hart,  with  a  grin,  "  'e  wants  to 
drive  a  moty  car,  don't  'e?  'E's  to  be  an  engineer,  ain't 
'e?  'E'll  be  a  gemmun  yet,  you  take  my  word." 

"  Surelye;"  said  Mr.  Keele  bitterly,  his  emotion  such 
that  from  the  prevailing  cockney  speech  he  dropped  for 
a  second  into  Sussex.  He  seemed  to  find  it  difficult  to 
speak;  he  could  not  express  how  much  it  outraged  him 
that  he,  the  fifth  Keele  to  control  Stoat's  Farm,  should 
see  his  children  flee  to  the  cities.  His  three  daughters 
had  married  and  left  him;  the  elder  son  was  a  shopman 
in  Boxhill;  now  the  younger  was  going  the  way  of  his 
flesh.  He  could  not  restrain  it.  "  I'm  ashamed  when 
I  thinks  of  it,"  he  said. 

"  Cheer  up !  "  said  Hart  suddenly,  enormously  slap- 


IN  ENGLAND  43 

ping  him  on  the  shoulder  with  a  fat  red  hand.  "  Cheer 
up,  you'll  get  sugar  in  heaven  if  you  don't  get  it  here. 
And  they'll  sell  it  you  without  your  buying  a  gallon  of 
paraffin." 

There  was  laughter,  in  the  midst  of  which  the  little 
sandy  man,  the  village  cobbler,  whose  name  was  Farcet, 
was  heard  to  ask  whether  there  was  any  news. 

"  News  be  damned,"  said  Port,  expressing  the  county 
feeling  towards  the  war.  "  What  I  want  to  know  is  this. 
They're  setting  up  a  tribunal,  and  they  say  Squire's 
chairman.  Well,  is  'e  going  to  stand  up  for  the  land? 
That's  what  I  want  to  know." 

"  Of  course  'e'll  stand  up  for  the  land,"  said  Hart; 
"  'e's  a  good  un." 

"  Sir  Hugh's  an  excellent  landlord,"  said  Mr.  Cashel 
judicially. 

Mr.  Hart  gulped  down  his  beer  and  turned  on  Cashel 
with  a  certain  savagery  of  admiration.  "A  good  un! 
A  damn  good  un.  Known  'im  forty  years,  I  'ave:  they 
don't  breed  that  sort  nowadays.  Why,  I  remember,  I 
was  a  nipper  then,  in  77  it  was.  I  remember  it  as  if  it 
was  yesterday.  The  old  Squire,  Sir  James,  he  was  alive 
then.  This  young  feller,  he  was  coming  along  the  lane 
to  the  farm.  I  remember  'e  was  fourteen  then,  same  as 
me,  out  for  a  holiday  from  his  fine  school,  Eton-and- 
Oxford  they  called  it,  I  think.  Well,  I  was  just  rushing 
out  of  the  gate,  and  I  caught  'im  as  'e  was  turning  the 
corner  —  plump  in  the  belly.  JE  picks  'imself  up  an' 
looks  at  me,  not  red  as  you  might  think,  but  greeny 
white,  Je  was  that  angry.  '  Beg  pardon/  I  sez.  '  Beg 
pardon  what? '  sez  the  young  feller.  '  Beg  pardon/  I 
sez.  '  Beg  pardon  Sir'  sez  'e.  '  Go  to  'ell,'  sez  I.  'E 
sez  nothing,  and  fetches  me  a  clip  on  the  ear,  I  can  feel 
it  now.  Gord!  we  'ad  a  warm  five  minutes.  I  shoved 


44  BLIND  ALLEY 

'im  into  the  ditch  and  I  called  'im  everything  I  knew, 
and  Vd  'ave  done  the  same,  but  'e  'adn't  learned  the 
words  at  'is  fine  school.  'E  broke  a  tooth  for  me,  'e  did." 

"  And  who  won?  "  asked  Farcet,  suddenly.  The  fat 
man  laughed. 

"  Well,  I  suppose  'e  won,  if  me  being  chucked  into  the 
manure  means  anything.  But  'e  picked  me  up,  and  'e 
wiped  most  of  the  muck  off  and  shook  'ands.  'E's  a 
genamun,  dammun!  " 

"  Aye,  he's  a  gemmun." 

"  Ah,"  said  Hart,  "  wish  I'd  'ad  a  boy  like  'im  instead 
o'  Molly.  Oh,  she  ain't  a  bad  un,  but  you  gets  kind  o' 
sick  o'  ribbons  and  scented  soap,  and  young  fellers  send- 
ing valentines  from  the  railway  yard  at  Ashford." 

"  Don't  you  worry,"  said  Hart,  "  you  won't  be  both- 
ered with  'er  long." 
.    "  What  do  you  mean?  "  said  Hart. 

The  table  laughed  with  an  air  of  secretive  sensuality. 
Then  Farcet  said:  "  It  don't  do  to  talk,  but  they  say 
there'll  be  wedding  bells  soon  at  Ascalon." 

Mr.  Hart  laid  upon  the  table  two  enormous  fists  and 
said:  "If  it's  that  Cradoc  you're  talking  of  —  if  you 
think  that  she's  going  ter  'ave  'im  —  jgrrr  —  I'll  rive  the 
guts  out  of  'im." 

"Won't  be  difficult,"  said  Keele.  "Wot's  it  'e  calls 
'imself?  Conscientious  objector,  ain't  it?  You'll  tan  'im 
as  easy  as  Squire  tanned  you." 

"  I'll  tan  'im  as  easily  as  I'd  tan  you,  Keele,"  replied 
Hart,  "  but  there,  that  sort  don't  need  tanning;  tarring 
and  feathering,  that's  more  like  it." 

"  'Ear,  'ear,"  said  Port.  "  It's  not  as  if  'e  was  on  the 
land.  'Oo  wants  grocers?  My  boys  ain't  conscientious 
objectors,  but  somebody's  got  to  look  after  the  farm." 

Mr.  Farcet  held  to  the  subject  as  if  it  fascinated  him. 


IN  ENGLAND  45 

"  What's  going  to  happen  to  'im,  do  you  think?  "  he 
asked. 

"  He'll  go  up  before  the  Tribunal,"  said  Barry,  "  and 
tell  'em  'e  wouldn't  kill  a  slug  'cos  it's  all  God's  beautiful 
life." 

"  And  wot '11  the  Tribunal  say?  "  asked  Farcet. 

"  Oh,  I  dunno.  Smack  'im  on  the  cheek  and  see  if  'e 
turns  the  other.  Squire's  chairman,  and  I'll  be  sorry  for 
Cradoc  when  Squire's  done  with  'im." 

"  Well,"  said  Mr.  Cashel,  "  you  know  a  man  may  be  a 
conscientious  objector;  it's  the  law." 

"  The  law's  the  law,"  said  Mr.  Keele,  "  and  a  con- 
scientious objector,  'e's  —  'e's  a  louse."  There  was  a 
little  silence,  and  Barry  said: 

"  Well,  after  all,  why  should  he  go?  I'd  go  if  I  could, 
but  who's  to  run  the  ironmongery?  " 

"  Same  here,"  said  Abbey.  "  You  don't  want  to  'ave 
to  go  into  Rye  to  buy  a  pair  of  socks." 

"  No,  to  be  sure,"  said  one  of  the  old  labourers,  though 
what  this  applied  to  was  not  clear.  For  a  moment 
nobody  said  anything;  the  pipes  smoked  slowly.  The 
countryside  was  meditating  over  this  problem:  Why 
should  Cradoc  go?  Why  should  anybody  go?  Go  to  a 
place  nobody's  ever  heard  of.  Ah !  if  the  Germans  came 
to  Sussex  it  might  be  different.  "If  'e  comes  near  my 
girl,"  Hart  summed  up,  "  I'll  rive  'is  guts  out."  But 
there  was  no  echo.  It  was  as  if  the  profound  thoughts 
of  the  countrymen,  that  range  no  further  than  the  sky 
line,  and  embrace  every  detail  within  its  curve,  were 
fastened  upon  the  sense  of  community  within  that  little 
space,  which  forbade  Cradoc  to  join  the  army,  just  as  it 
forbade  young  Keele  to  make  for  the  garages  of  Hast- 
ings. For  a  moment  the  talk  wandered  away  from  these 
dim  connections  with  the  war.  They  talked  of  the  funny 


46  BLIND  ALLEY 

gardening  in  Villa-Land,  of  the  absurd  townsmen  who 
already  were  sowing  beans  and  broccoli,  so  that  the  spring 
rains  might  duly  rot  their  seeds. 

"  That  sort,"  said  Keele,  "  they  dunno  what  top- 
dressing  is.  They  puts  in  onions  in  soft  clay  just  as  they 
might  put  roses.  Dig!  That  sort  can't  dig.  See  'em 
run  their  drills  by  each  other;  you  couldn't  lay  your  hand 
between  two  rows." 

Thicker  and  thicker  hung  the  smoke.  Oaths  and 
threats  rose  up  as  the  probable  maximum  prices  of  meat 
were  discussed.  Mr.  Cashel  still  polished  and  listened; 
sometimes  one  of  the  old  labourers  gravely  nodded  his 
head  with  an  air  of  intellectual  enlightenment. 


MARCH  was  passing.  As  waves  successively  breaking 
on  the  shore,  but  ever  rising,  the  Germans  drew  closer 
to  Verdun.  One  day  a  fort  still  flew  a  battered  tricolour, 
for  a  moment  maintained  tradition  against  experience, 
revived  in  isolated  gallantry  the  prejudice  of  glacis,  scarp 
and  counterscarp,  then  fell,  was  a  dot,  a  name,  a  shadow 
merged  within  the  greater  shadow  of  the  field  greys. 
They  came  on,  the  field  greys,  under  shrapnel,  decimated 
by  machine-gun  fire,  mined  a  division  at  a  time  in  woods, 
like  a  tide  creeping  into  rocky  channels,  rising  about 
unconquered  bluffs.  The  black  line  on  the  newspaper 
maps  twisted  as  a  tortured  serpent  closer  about  tiny  vil- 
lages, tiny  as  Troy  and  as  epic,  until  their  names,  Vaux, 
Cumieres,  shone  red  as  beacons  in  the  straining  strife. 
Through  a  smoke  cloud  they  were  glimpsed,  pawns  of 
fate,  toys  of  a  press  that  enthroned  them,  frail  barriers 
against  the  guns  which  already  poured  flame  into  the 
streets  of  Verdun,  a  press  full  of  hint,  apology,  explana- 


IN  ENGLAND  47 

tion,  galvanised  to  cry  only  "  Hold  out!  "  to  reassure  by 
promise  .  .  . 

God !  that  offensive  of  ours,  will  it  never  start? 

And  ringed  about  by  a  foul  Eastern  river,  stinking  with 
mud  and  corpses,  cut  off  as  Gordon  in  Khartoum,  Town- 
shend  in  Kut,  penned  in  as  a  wild  boar  at  bay  that  can 
only  foam  and  bristle,  preparing  the  daily  miracle  of  the 
sun,  by  raising  among  men  that  shambled  with  fever- 
leaded  feet,  filthy  with  sores,  crawling  with  vermin,  the 
standard  of  the  forgotten  St.  George  .  .  . 


XI 

SIR  HUGH  fled  rather  than  went  to  town.  He  had 
nothing  to  do  there ;  indeed  he  ought  on  that  Wednesday 
to  have  attended  a  sitting  of  the  Board  of  Control,  but 
the  feeling  which  in  October  of  the  previous  year  had 
led  him  to  shut  up  Connaught  Square  and  lock  himself 
up  at  Knapenden,  far  from  placards,  shouting  newsboys, 
urgent  telephones,  tape  machines,  had  a  way  of  reversing 
itself  and  of  driving  him  up  to  town.  It  was  as  if  the 
old  war  fever  lay  dormant  in  his  blood,  and  now  and  then 
broke  out.  He  was  feverish  that  day,  for  the  agony  of 
Verdun  followed  him  close,  its  shadow  hanging  over  the 
train,  as  if  some  flying  roc  cast  over  him  the  black  aura 
of  its  wings.  So  he  was  glad  to  find  Charing  Cross  so 
busy,  like  an  ant  hill  stirred;  the  Strand  was  extraor- 
dinarily full  of  young  men  in  khaki,  excited  girls,  middle- 
aged  and  elderly  people  who  seemed  to  have  rediscovered 
something  to  do.  It  was  still  winter  in  London  on  this 
March  morning;  he  missed  the  rising  scent  of  spring,  so 
strong  already  in  Udimore  Copse,  but  in  a  way  spring 
was  expressing  itself  in  the  women's  faces,  little  rosy 


48  BLIND  ALLEY 

animals  nestling  in  furs.  As  he  walked  up  Pall  Mall 
he  felt  that  so  vivid  a  generation  could  not  die. 

In  another  way  this  was  borne  out  a  little  later  when 
he  entered  the  Mausoleum  Club  where  he  was  to  lunch 
with  Angus  Cawston.  There  was  something  so  solid  and 
certain  about  his  brother-in-law;  like  Lady  Oakley  he 
was  full  of  thick  life,  which  contrasted  with  Sir  Hugh's 
fine  nervousness;  because  Cawston  was  large,  square, 
heavy,  he  had  for  Sir  Hugh  something  of  the  physical 
attraction  which  had  flung  him,  a  little  fearful  but  enrap- 
tured, into  Lady  Oakley's  strong  arms. 

Cawston  took  charge  of  him  in  a  businesslike  way;  in 
a  sense  he  hung  up  his  visitor's  hat.  Things  went  with 
a  swish.  Sir  Hugh  was  shepherded  up  the  vast  staircase 
into  the  dining  room  with  the  colonnaded  front:  if  the 
Mausoleum  had  been  Sir  Hugh's  own  club,  even  so  Caw- 
ston would  have  ordered  the  lunch.  He  talked  a  great 
deal  during  lunch. 

"We  aren't  getting  on  with  this  war.  Oh!  I  don't 
mean  only  out  there;  we  can't  do  anything  about  that, 
we  civilians.  It's  here  I  mean.  We're  just  slacking 
along,  half-doing  things,  or  pretending  we  are.  War 
isn't  a  tea-party,  as  Bernhardi  says.  Look  at  the  Ger- 
man banks." 

"  They're  winding  them  up,"  said  Sir  Hugh,  "  aren't 
they?  " 

"Winding  them  up!"  said  Cawston  bitterly,  "we're 
giving  the  key  one  turn  a  week.  That's  how  we  wind  up 
the  German  banks.  I  went  into  the  Deutsche  Bank  yes- 
terday—  full  of  Huns,  great,  fat,  prosperous  Huns. 
They're  not  worrying  about  their  jobs.  They  know  their 
bank  won't  be  wound  up  by  the  time  we've  wound  up 
the  watch  on  the  Rhine.  Hugh,  it  makes  me  sick. 
Everything  makes  me  sick.  Look  at  the  blockade!  The 


IN  ENGLAND  49 

other  day  we  let  through  eighteen  hundred  tons  of  rubber 
because  they  were  going  to  Sweden.  But,  good  God! 
Sweden  hasn't  used  eighteen  hundred  tons  of  rubber  since 
she  was  born." 

"  I  quite  agree  with  you,"  said  Sir  Hugh,  "but  Sweden's 
neutral.  Even  if  she  is  trading  with  Germany,  we  can't 
help  it." 

"  Stop  the  goods." 

"  Yes,  stop  'em,  if  you  can  show  they  are  going  to  Ger- 
many. But  you  can't  stop  goods  to  a  neutral." 

"  Don't  have  beef,  try  the  cold  saddle;  the  Mausoleum 
prides  itself  on  its  saddle.  What  were  you  saying?  Oh ! 
about  neutrals.  Well,  we  can't  be  bothered  with  neu- 
trals. We've  got  to  ration  'em,  and  if  we  don't  let  'em 
have  quite  enough  they  won't  be  able  to  sell  anything  to 
Germany.  Oh!  I  know,"  he  went  on,  suppressing  Sir 
Hugh,  "  I  know  your  ideas  about  fair  play,  and  they're 
all  very  well  in  the  ordinary  way,  but  this  is  war,  man! 
war!  We  can't  be  quixotic  about  it.  Neutrals  must 
suffer;  serve  them  damn  well  right  for  being  neutrals." 

Sir  Hugh  smiled.  "  You  mean  serve  them  damn  well 
right  for  being  little  neutrals.  You  wouldn't  try  it  on 
the  U.  S.  A.,  would  you?  " 

Cawston  made  a  broad  gesture,  and  for  a  moment  Sir 
Hugh  wondered  why  he  liked  him  so,  this  heavy  club- 
man with  the  fleshy  cheeks,  tight  collar,  cross-barred 
cravat,  eyeglass  grafted  under  the  heavy  eyelid,  hogged 
reddish  moustache,  all  complete.  So  like  Lena,  with  his 
dark  red  hair;  that  must  be  it.  While  Sir  Hugh  was 
thinking,  Cawston  escaped  the  awkward  question. 

"  They'll  be  all  right  by  and  by.  This  war  is  touch- 
ing up  their  moral  feelings  no  end;  and  when  a  moral 
man  is  properly  touched  up,  he  makes  a  first-class  mur- 
derer. They  may  be  too  proud  to  fight,  but  they'll  get 


50  BLIND   ALLEY 

shoved  into  it  sooner  or  later.  Look  at  this  fodder  busi- 
ness. David  has  it  from  the  Controller  himself:  four 
thousand  bales  of  hay  from  the  States  were  lying  at 
Southampton.  If  we'd  been  able  to  unload  them  it'd 
never  have  come  out,  but  we  didn't,  and  after  a  while  the 
hay  got  heated  and  we  had  to  put  the  fire  out.  And 
what  did  they  find  when  they  went  down  to  see  the 
damage?  Thousands  and  thousands  of  little  steel  hooks, 
scattered  all  through  that  hay.  Kill  every  horse  that  ate 
it.  And  after  that  you  tell  me  we've  got  to  talk  of  fair 
play!  " 

Sir  Hugh  was  silent:  he  was  a  country  gentleman,  and 
somehow  it  shocked  him  more  to  think  of  horses  with 
their  entrails  stabbed  by  steel  hooks  than  if  this  had 
been  done  to  men. 

He  did  not  say  much  more  during  the  meal,  for  a  little 
grey  man,  whose  name  Sir  Hugh  never  surprised,  joined 
them.  He  found  himself  listening  to  the  conversation 
around  him. 

"  We've  got  to  give  it  'em  hot  and  strong,"  said  the 
grey  man,  "  reprisals  all  the  time,  that's  the  only  way. 
Look  at  that  seaplane  raid  on  Walmer.  What's  Walmer? 
Saturday  afternoon  excursion.  Well,  we've  got  to  give  it 
'em  back.  Drop  a  few  bombs  on  Cologne,  town  for 
town,  and  ton  for  ton." 

"  Tit  for  tat,"  whispered  some  irreverent  spirit  in  Sir 
Hugh's  mind.  "  He  is  quite  right,  though  ..." 

"  They  talk  of  frightfulness,"  said  Cawston.  "  Well, 
they  know  their  business.  We  can  give  'em  a  bit  of 
frightfulness.  Pity  we  didn't  start  it." 

"  Yes,"  said  the  grey  man.  "  We're  getting  out  a  new 
bomb,  you  know.  Said  to  be  prussic  acid  mostly. 
Funny  stuff:  it  makes  you  jump  into  the  air  and  tie  your- 
self into  knots." 


IN  ENGLAND  51 

Unreasonably  Sir  Hugh  smiled.  It  was  a  comic  way 
of  killing. 

"  The  way  you  describe  it,"  he  said,  "  makes  me  think 
of  the  old  riddle:  What  is  the  difference  between  the 
manner  of  death  of  a  hairdresser  and  a  sculptor?  You 
know,  the  hairdresser  curls  up  and  dyes,  while  the  sculp- 
tor makes  faces  and  busts." 

They  laughed  all  three.  Cawston  brought  the  conver- 
sation back  to  reality  by  asking  whether  the  Southern 
Board  of  Control  was  at  last  supplying  the  nets  for  sub- 
marine fishing.  And  for  a  time  the  conversation  became 
fantastic :  submarines  were  being  fished  for,  like  shrimps ; 
Cawston  and  the  grey  man  both  knew  somebody  whose 
friends  had  seen  them  lying  in  dozens  in  Portsmouth 
graving-dock.  The  talk  wandered,  as  they  went  to  the 
smoking  room,  to  the  difficulty  of  enlisting  submarine 
crews. 

"  It  won't  matter  now,"  said  Cawston,  "  now  that  we've 
got  compulsion.  Get  all  the  men  we  want.  At  least  we 
shall  soon.  '  Single  men  first '  won't  last." 

At  this  stage  Sir  Hugh  noticed  that  the  grey  man  looked 
meditative.  Over  coffee  and  liqueurs  the  discussion  was 
confined  to  the  coming  general  compulsion. 

"  We've  got  to  have  it,"  said  Cawston.  "  Before  we've 
done  with  this  job  every  man  will  have  to  go.  Every 
man  up  to  forty." 

Sir  Hugh  found  himself  putting  in  a  plea  for  the  land. 

"  Oh !  the  land  must  look  after  itself,"  said  Cawston. 
With  a  sense  of  ignoble  detail,  he  added:  "We  must 
paddle  along  as  best  we  can.  It's  no  good  favouring 
the  land,  or  we'll  have  no  land  left  to  favour." 

A  vein  of  sentiment  appeared  in  him: 

"When  I  think  of  Belgium  and  France  all  torn  and 
burnt,  and  of  all  that  country  round  Knapenden  with 


52  BLIND  ALLEY 

the  villagers  sitting  down  to  their  pots  of  beer  in  the 
oast-houses  ..." 

"  They  don't  sit  in  the  oast-houses,"  said  Sir  Hugh. 

"Well,  anyhow,  it's  all  very  picturesque,  and  all  the 
little  English  villages  nestling  in  the  dells,  it  makes  me 
think  —  oh,  well  —  you  know.  Ah!  if  I  had  a  son  I'd 
be  proud  to  give  him  to  his  country." 

"  Yes,"  said  Sir  Hugh,  slowly,  "  I've  got  a  son.  I 
know." 

Then  the  little  grey  man  bent  forward  confidentially 
and  said: 

"  I  was  thinking  while  you  were  telling  us  about  the 
Board  of  Control.  I  agree  with  you  that  compulsion  all 
round  is  a  matter  of  months.  Now  my  son  is  managing 
a  motor  business.  He's  doing  very  well,  but  he  couldn't 
very  well  attest.  It  wasn't  much  good.  You  see  the 
business  couldn't  spare  him.  He's  starred.  Only  —  if 
we're  going  to  have  compulsion  all  round,  it  strikes  me," 
and  his  voice  filled  with  patriotic  solemnities,  "  that  he 
ought  to  do  something.  I  wonder  whether  the  Board  of 
Control  could  find  something  for  him.  First-class  busi- 
ness man,  knows  all  about  cars.  Of  course,  it's  very 
awkward  for  the  business,  but  still  in  these  days,  I'm 
sure  you  agree  with  me,  he  ought  to  do  something." 

Sir  Hugh  vaguely  promised  to  see  what  he  could  do. 
He  had  not  yet  attained  a  condition  of  irony,  and  so 
saw  no  opposition  between  the  grey  man's  paternal  am- 
bitions and  the  rumbling  talk  of  reprisals  and  spreading 
destructions  which  issued  from  his  lips.  He  left  the  Club 
a  little  later. 

"  Good-bye,  Angus.    How's  Genevieve?  " 

"  Doing  fine ;  she  is  in  the  Women's  Emergency  Corps, 
drill,  canteen  work  at  Woolwich  half  the  night;  it's  mak- 
ing another  girl  of  her.  Jolly  good  for  girls,  all  this; 


IN  ENGLAND  53 

it's  hauling  'em  out  of  all  that  shopping  and  fashions. 
Bringing  them  up  against  things,  you  know.  We'll  get 
a  better  type  of  girl  all  round.  I  shouldn't  wonder  if 
after  the  war  we  got  a  nobler  and  purer  kind  of  domestic 
life." 

"  I  wonder,"  thought  Sir  Hugh  as  he  went  along  Pall 
Mall.  The  countryman's  eyes  were  open  to  differences. 
There  were  many  girls  in  uniform,  W.  E.  C's,  V.  A.  D's, 
nurses,  girls  dressed  up  to  look  like  Serbian  vivandieres, 
or  something  equally  incredible,  Government  office  girls 
with  bobbed  hair,  a  touch  of  lip  salve,  and  a  following 
airman.  Excited,  busy-looking  crowd.  Not  much  hate 
there.  What  a  lark  the  war  was!  Then  Sir  Hugh  began 
to  reproach  himself:  "After  all,  how  am  I  taking  the 
war?  "  He  thought  himself  inadequate  in  hate.  Never 
would  he  attain  the  sacred  fervour  of  Cawston,  the  little 
grey  man,  his  own  wife,  anybody.  War  was  a  beastly 
job  you  had  to  do.  Could  not  one  do  it  decently?  Had 
we  like  the  Homeric  heroes  to  stand  in  front  of  each 
other  and  call  one  another  filthy  names  before  fighting? 
Fight  and  win,  or  fight  and  lose,  and  shake  hands  and  be 
damned  to  it.  They  were  not  taking  it  like  that,  any  of 
them.  All  this  talk  about  annexing  Mesopotamia,  and 
bagging  Egypt,  and  handing  over  Trieste  to  the  Italians, 
and  boycotts,  and  snatching  ships  —  it  was  all  quite 
sound,  quite  fair,  but  how  was  it  being  done?  Not  by 
cool  judges,  but  by  a  nasty  little  crowd  of  plaintiffs 
clawing  for  damages.  No  tournament  this,  but  an  inter- 
national bargain  sale. 

The  impression  hung  heavily  upon  him  all  that  day. 
Piccadilly  upset  him;  there  was  a  Flag  Day  going  on. 
And  a  girl  ogled  him  as  she  pinned  on  his  flag.  He  asked 
her  what  the  proceeds  were  for,  and  she  didn't  quite 
know.  At  his  own  club,  the  Gadarene,  lost  in  the 


54  BLIND  ALLEY 

augustnesses  of  St.  James's  Street,  he  listened  for  a  while 
to  the  conversation  in  the  billiard  room.  He  did  not 
know  the  men ;  apparently  they  had  started  with  a  debate 
on:  "Was  it  pronounced  '  VERDAIN  '  or  '  VERDOON  '?  " 
Instances  of  other  French  words  were  given.  Logic  was 
invoked.  Wipers  was  derided.  Etymology  waxed  hos- 
tile. The  balls  clicked,  somebody  swore.  Gloomily  fell 
the  afternoon  light.  "  Hard  lines,"  said  somebody.  Now 
etymology  passed  into  reminiscences  of  a  phantom,  Old 
Chips,  a  one-time  classical  master  of  Marlborough.  It 
wandered  from  Old  Chips  to  memories  of  fagging,  to 
scrapes  when  out  of  bounds.  An  Etonian  vowed  that 
Neuve  Chapelle  had  been  messed  on  the  historic  playing 
fields. 

Sir  Hugh  listened  sympathetically,  but  disturbed.  He 
understood  all  this.  Those  were  his  memories  too,  but 
for  many  years  he  had  been  thinking  of  other  things, 
politics,  finance,  land  and  roads,  all  that  sort  of  thing. 
His  school  days  seemed  further  back  than  those  of  his 
contemporaries.  Strange  creatures,  these  men  of  fifty, 
that  find  in  port  the  satisfaction  they  used  to  find  in 
tuck;  that  love  golf  as  once  they  loved  footer;  that  have 
given  up  Henty  and  Ballantyne  in  favour  of  Blackwood 
and  "  The  Winning  Post " ;  that  keep  horses  instead  of 
pet  white  mice,  that  are  all  having,  getting,  contesting, 
that  are  as  pleased  when  they  attain  a  K.  C.  B.  as  they 
liked  being  made  a  prefect.  Schoolboys !  Eternal  school- 
boys! but  schoolboys  in  office,  soldiers,  civil  servants, 
lawyers,  minds  that  are  as  they  were,  but  in  charge  of 
things  that  can  crush,  and  hurt,  and  wilt,  men  not  grown 
up,  yet  sticking  by  sheer  weight  to  the  surface  of  a  world 
that  whirls  them  where  it  lists.  Up  against  a  war  like 
this,  men  like  this.  Men  capable  only  of  seeing  to-day, 
bound  to  be  surprised  by  to-morrow,  concerned  with 


IN  ENGLAND  55 

atrocities  more  than  with  the  impulses  which  underlie 
atrocities,  with  revenge  rather  than  with  adjustment. 
And  Sir  Hugh  tried  to  formulate  the  thoughts  that  in- 
spired him  in  the  pursuit  of  similar  ends,  so  that  his 
effort  might  have  afflatus,  something  that  one  might  call 
the  war  creed  of  a  gentleman.  Something  like  this: 

"  I  believe  in  God  the  Father,  in  His  Representative, 
Jesus  Christ,  and  in  His  Metaphor,  the  Holy  Ghost.  His 
relative,  the  Virgin,  I  have  decided  to  omit.  His  Saints 
I  tolerate;  their  chairman,  St.  George,  I  respect  because 
he  is  royally  appointed  to  Me. 

"  I  believe  in  the  gentlemen  of  England. 

"  I  believe  in  times  of  peace  that  my  dominance  is 
founded  on  the  Latin  grammar  and  the  Greek  alphabet, 
on  cricket  and  football;  on  beef,  on  port  and  sherry,  on 
the  House  of  Lords,  on  the  pre-Bathurst  Morning  Post, 
and  the  pre-Northcliffe  Times,  on  my  father;  on  his 
father. 

"  I  believe  that  in  times  of  war  my  code  of  peace  must 
be  maintained.  I  believe  that  war  must  be  waged  in 
accordance  with  the  rules  of  the  game,  that  no  weapon 
may  be  used  that  has  not  been  used  before;  thus  I  may 
not  use  gas,  liquid  fire,  aeroplane  darts,  nor  may  I  bom- 
bard open  towns,  or  torpedo  merchant  ships;  but  I  may 
use  swords,  bayonets,  rifles,  guns  (light,  heavy  and 
machine),  pikes,  battering-rams,  bows  and  arrows,  flint 
axes. 

"  I  believe  that  though  my  enemy  uses  unlawful 
weapons,  I  may  not  imitate  him.  If  he  so  do  and  prevail, 
then  according  to  the  rules  of  the  game,  though  victorious, 
he  shall  be  deemed  to  have  lost  it. 

"  I  believe  that  spying  and  the  opening  of  letters  may 
not  be  practised  by  me,  for  these  are  against  the  rules 
of  the  game. 


56  BLIND  ALLEY 

"  I  believe  that  I  may  not  interfere  with  the  enemy's 
commercial  and  industrial  activities,  for  this  is  outside 
the  game.  Moreover,  I  am  not  fully  aware  that  such 
activities  exist. 

"  I  believe  that  I  may  not  seduce  the  enemy's  subject 
peoples,  or  foment  discontent  among  his  labouring  class, 
for  it  is  beneath  me  to  treat  with  vassals;  also  I  am  not 
fully  aware  that  the  labouring  class  exists. 

"  I  believe  that  no  harm  may  be  done  to  the  enemy's 
wounded,  his  women,  children,  aged,  or  sick.  If  the 
enemy  act  otherwise,  then  he  has  broken  a  rule  of  the 
game,  and  though  victorious  shall  be  deemed  to  have 
lost  it. 

"  I  believe  that  I  owe  all  this  to  my  own  vanity,  and 
that  I  am  entitled  to  claim  from  myself  everything  except 
victory." 

But  such  nebulous  formulations,  however  exalting,  did 
not  reconcile  him  with  London.  London  in  wartime  did 
not  look  as  if  it  were  practising  a  war  creed  of  any  kind. 
It  was  just  shoving  into  omnibuses,  and  buying  up  choco- 
lates in  case  they  ran  short.  He  had  moments;  one  does 
not  escape  moments  in  London,  for  she  is  so  large  that 
in  broad  spaces  like  Whitehall  her  futilities  take  upon 
themselves  an  air  of  importance.  Little  men  in  White- 
hall scurrying,  very  busy,  all  of  them  kings,  even  though 
only  of  Lilliput.  One  of  those  moments  was  the  march 
past  of  a  battalion  of  Scots  Guards,  great  creatures 
spangled  with  barbarous  tokens,  big  fellows  with  lovely 
knees  carved  out  of  brown  marble.  And  their  savage 
music  made  something  rise  and  swell  in  Sir  Hugh's  throat. 
The  bagpipes  shocked  him,  as  they  do  all  Southerners; 
their  wild  melody,  full  of  blood  lust,  full  of  mourning, 
struck  him  as  indecent  and  violating,  but  in  a  sensual 
way  he  enjoyed  this  public  violation  of  his  emotions. 


IN  ENGLAND  57 

Still  he  was  glad  to  go  home.  He  felt  the  need  to  get 
away  from  the  war,  and  it  was  this  perhaps  that  led  him 
to  lunch  with  his  uncle,  Charles  Oakley,  who  had  retired 
into  a  small  house  surrounded  by  broad  fields  at  the  top 
of  the  hill  east  of  Rye.  Charles  Oakley  was  very  old, 
seventy-five,  and  in  those  days  less  interesting  than  he 
had  been.  All  through  his  life  he  had  provided  Sir  Hugh 
with  perpetual  interest,  for  the  old  man  had  once  upon 
a  time  flaunted  a  wild  and  insolent  youth  at  Cremorne, 
Vauxhall,  Tortoni's,  on  every  race  course,  wherever  bac- 
carat was  played;  he  had  known  Napoleon  III  and  been 
in  love  with  Eugenie,  worn  very  tight  trousers  with 
straps  under  his  boots,  and  once  upon  a  time,  in  Willis's, 
hidden  under  a  lady's  crinoline  to  escape  the  bailiffs. 
All  through  his  youth  and  early  manhood  Sir  Hugh  had 
turned  the  pages  of  his  uncle's  scandalous  chronicle,  but 
now  his  memory  was  growing  dim;  he  held  on  as  well  as 
he  could  to  faded  stories  about  Plon-Plon,  and  something 
vague  about' Randolph  Churchill,  which  began  with  some- 
body called  Guzzling  Jimmy  being  thrown  out  of  Mivart's 
—  and  the  rest  of  the  story  disappeared. 

Still  there  was  Charles  Oakley,  permanent,  eternal. 
In  his  retirement  he  produced  his  incredible  house.  For 
the  old  man  had  developed  a  mania  for  inlaying.  One 
might  be  sure  almost  at  any  time  of  hearing  from  the  hall 
the  caressing  whirr  of  his  fretsaw.  From  the  library 
interminably  issued  mahogany  tables  amazingly  faked 
into  Sheraton,  inlaid  trays,  and  difficult,  incredible  ob- 
jects, such  as  towel  horses  inlaid  in  marqueterie.  It  was 
a  bewildering  house.  It  was  so  persistently  inlaid  that 
it  twinkled.  Sometimes  Charles  Oakley  would  medita- 
tively look  at  the  panelled  walls  and  remark: 

"  One  can't  inlay  oak,  tk,  no,  one  can't  inlay  oak." 

It  was  a  pity. 


58  w  BLIND  ALLEY 

As  Sir  Hugh  entered  the  house  it  was  just  time  for 
lunch,  and  he  thought  with  satisfaction  of  going  after- 
wards into  the  library  and  congratulating  the  old  man  on 
some  difficult  performance,  such  as  a  Sheratonised  boot- 
jack, or  something  equally  strange.  But  when  the  time 
came,  and  he  followed  his  uncle  to  the  big  room,  he  saw 
that  times  had  changed.  No  longer  were  the  great  Dutch 
tables  obtrusive:  they  were  covered  with  vast  war  maps, 
dotted  about  with  little  flags.  Without  a  word  the  old 
man  sat  down  before  the  eastern  France  section,  his  red, 
stiff  finger  tracing,  as  if  he  loved  it,  the  course  of  the 
Meuse.  Sometimes  he  adjusted  a  little  flag,  or  pulled 
it  out  and  stuck  it  in  again  into  the  same  hole.  He  had 
no  reminiscence  to-day,  he  lived  only  in  the  present;  he 
smiled  up  into  his  nephew's  face,  delighted  with  this  new 
toy  — the  War! 

So,  in  greater  loneliness,  Sir  Hugh  walked  all  the  way 
along  the  ridge,  feeling  that  he  must  go  home  to  greet  his 
sister,  Mrs.  Marchmont.  He  tried  to  express  to  his  wife 
a  little  of  this  sense  of  suspension,  so  strong  in  him  that 
day.  Lady  Oakley,  after  kissing  him  and  telling  him 
he  looked  tired,  seemed  unable  to  understand  the  vague 
suggestion  that  his  mind,  not  his  body  was  tired. 

"  Dear  old  man,"  she  said.  "  I  wish  I  could  get  you 
sanatogen.  But  they've  stopped  it,  you  know;  it's  Ger- 
man." She  looked  at  him  anxiously.  She  still  loved 
her  old  husband  very  dearly,  and  she  understood  him 
not  a  bit  more  than  when  they  came  together  twenty- 
seven  years  before.  Perhaps  that  was  why  she  still  loved 
him.  But  her  incapacity  to  grasp  in  him  the  things  he 
could  not  grasp  himself  filled  Sir  Hugh  with  a  certain 
discontent.  He  still  liked  the  feel  under  his  arm  of  her 
broad,  firm  shoulder;  he  liked  the  heavy  wealth  of  her 
red-brown  hair.  How  extraordinarily  good-looking  she 


IN  ENGLAND  59 

still  was  at  forty-five.  "  Dear  old  Lena,"  he  murmured, 
then  sighed,  realising  that  emotion  is  not  quite  as  good  as 
understanding.  He  shook  it  off. 

"  Hetty's  come,  I  suppose." 

"  Yes ;  she's  in  the  drawing-room,  simply  champing  for 
tea." 

Sir  Hugh  laughed.  He  knew  his  sister's  regular  habits. 
To  Mrs.  Marchmont  five  o'clock  tea  meant  five  o'clock, 
and  not  five  past  five  tea. 

As  soon  as  he  sat  down,  Mrs.  Marchmont,  evidently 
stirred  by  the  war,  began  a  frontal  attack  upon  the  period 
she  generally  described  as  "The  Times  In  Which  We 
Live."  Apparently  she  had  nearly  been  knocked  down 
by  a  motor  car,  this  invention  of  the  devil  and  the 
twentieth  century. 

"  They  ought  to  be  put  down.    Put  down!  " 

"  Steady  on,"  said  Sir  Hugh,  "  what  about  horses? 
Remember  how  you  broke  your  collarbone  in  '81?  " 

Mrs.  Marchmont  took  not  the  slightest  notice.  She 
was  a  little,  spare  woman,  with  beautiful  hard  hands,  and 
an  air  of  having  been  cut  out  by  machinery  and  carefully 
French  polished.  Substantially,  as  tea  was  more  and 
more  delayed,  she  felt  it  necessary  to  state  her  point  of 
view.  Namely,  she  disliked  radicals,  labour  men  and 
socialists;  Jews  were  abominable  and  Dissenters  were 
worse,  for  anyhow  the  Jews  had  produced  Mr.  Disraeli; 
vegetarians  were  detestable ;  everybody  ought  to  be  vac- 
cinated by  force;  anti-vivisectionists  should  be  handed 
over  to  the  doctors,  so  that  the  latter  might  demonstrate 
their  humanity.  She  disliked  the  cinema.  Poets  should 
have  their  hair  cut.  And  anyhow,  poetry  was  not  poetry 
until  it  was  bound  in  morocco. 

Sir  Hugh  enjoyed  Hetty.  Such  a  Protest!  The  whole 
of  tea  was  occupied  by  stimulating  objections  from  Sir 


60  BLIND  ALLEY 

Hugh,  who  was  exasperated  into  defending  Cobden. 
Mrs.  Marchmont  ate  abundantly,  and  drank  so  much 
tea  that  it  evidently  got  into  her  head;  she  got  to  the 
point  of  clamouring  for  a  Man  to  save  England,  a  very 
advanced  condition.  Also  she  became  angry  because  her 
brother  seemed  to  think  her  funny,  and  she  could  not 
perceive  what  he  thought  funny,  but  just  as  Mrs.  March- 
mont declared  that  advertisement  ought  to  be  made  a 
punishable  offence  and  Sir  Hugh  lay  back  in  his  arm- 
chair giggling,  the  door  opened  to  let  in  Lee,  bearing  a 
salver,  his  face  with  the  considerable  nose  suggestive  of 
disturbance. 

As  he  closed  the  door,  one  after  the  other  of  the 
three  looked  at  him.  Lady  Oakley's  sentence  suddenly 
stumbled  and  faded  away :  Sir  Hugh  convulsively  grasped 
the  two  sides  of  the  armchair,  while  Mrs.  Marchmont 
became  set  and  immovable.  Upon  the  salver  lay  a  tele- 
gram. The  three  sat  staring  at  Lee  as  he  came  closer. 
In  those  days  nobody  sent  telegrams.  It  wasn't  fair  to 
send  telegrams.  Everybody  knew  what  they  meant. 
Was  Lee  coming  from  miles  away?  He  seemed  so  long. 
Together  Lady  Oakley  and  Sir  Hugh  felt:  "  Stephen  is 
killed."  Mrs.  Marchmont  thought:  "Bob's  gone!" 

And  still  Lee,  from  that  interminable  distance,  came 
striding  towards  them.  All  three  were  taut;  each  one 
knew  that  the  blow  must  be  his. 

Then  at  last  Lee  handed  the  telegram  to  Mrs.  March- 
mont. The  old  lady  did  not  tear  it  open.  She  sat  up  in 
her  chair,  rigid,  looking  at  the  others  with  defiance. 
"  Well?  "  she  seemed  to  be  saying,  "  What  of  it?  "  Then, 
at  last,  very  quietly,  she  opened  the  envelope,  unfolded 
the  paper  and  said  aloud:  "  Missing,  that's  what  it  says, 
but  Bob's  gone!" 

With  a  swift  movement  Lady  Oakley  went  to  the  arm- 


IN  ENGLAND  61 

c'hair,  and  put  her  arms  about  her  sister-in-law.  Mrs. 
Marchmont  gently  pushed  her  aside. 

"I  think  I  will  go  upstairs,  Lena,"  and  without  a 
tremor  on  her  face,  neither  quickly  nor  slowly,  she  went 
out. 

"By  God!"  murmured  Sir  Hugh,  "she's  game!" 
And  suddenly  a  blush  of  self-hate  and  self-contempt  rose 
in  his  cheeks;  he  realised  himself  as  vile  because  he  was 
so  happy:  it  was  not  Stephen.  Then  he  went  across  to 
his  wife  and  softly  stroked  her  hair.  Lady  Oakley's 
cheeks  were  trembling  and  she  was  pretending  not  to 
cry,  dabbing  angrily  at  her  eyes,  as  if  she  hated  her  tears. 

"  It  was  forwarded  from  London,"  she  said,  foolishly. 

"  Don't  cry,"  said  Sir  Hugh,  "  perhaps  he's  a  prisoner." 

"  Oh,  no!  "  said  Lady  Oakley.  "  Hetty's  right,  Bob's 
gone." 

Suddenly  she  clasped  her  hands  together,  and  once 
more  the  Wagnerian  look  came  into  her  eyes. 

"  It's  dreadful,  but  it's  got  to  be  ...  '  Who  dies 
if  England  lives?' " 

XII 

THAT  particular  week-end  was  overhung  by  the  uncer- 
tainty of  Robert  Marchmont's  fate.  One  didn't  speak 
of  it,  and  Mrs.  Marchmont  painfully  insisted  on  playing 
bridge  on  the  Saturday  night  and  coming  down  to  tea 
on  Sunday  afternoon  to  entertain  the  Jesmonds,  but  one 
thought  of  nothing  else.  The  house  was  full  of  youth, 
for  Monica  had  come  up  from  Rochester,  looking  older 
and  more  self-possessed,  proud  of  her  hands,  yellow  with 
T.  N.  T.  up  to  the  wrists.  She  adopted  the  spirit  of 
fortitude  that  was  about,  made  the  table  laugh  falsely 
by  describing  the  Club  night  at  Cottenham  Works. 


62  BLIND  ALLEY 

"  It  isn't  such  a  rag  as  you  might  think.  We're  too 
proper  and  genteel,  and  all  the  young  men  wore  linen 
collars.  We  enjoyed  ourselves  under  the  protection  of 
Miss  Livingstone,  who  looks  like  a  saint  turned  sanitary 
inspector.  It's  all  so  toney,  as  they  say,  programmes 
printed  by  the  factory,  pink  silk  cards,  refreshments 
strictly  non-intoxicating,  lancers,  but  not  kitchen,  no 
depraved  sitting-out  ..." 

But  she  had  to  stop.  She  realised  that  what  she  was 
saying  was  forced,  jaunty,  jerky.  It  was  impossible  to 
talk  of  these  things  with  fear  behind  them.  Poor  old 
Bob!  What  a  fight  she  had  had  with  him,  when  she 
was  six  and  he  was  ten,  because  he  had  unfairly  shared 
a  peach.  She  could  still  remember  with  delight  smash- 
ing the  unfair  half  upon  his  right  eye.  She  almost  cried 
as  she  thought  of  it. 

The  Jervaulx  couple  was  there  too,  Sylvia,  beautiful 
and  agitated,  talking  continually  of  committees  that  she 
must  attend,  munitions  she  must  make,  motors  she  must 
drive,  and  producing  wherever  she  went  a  sensation  of 
flurry.  Sir  Hugh  watched  her  with  surprise:  her  bril- 
liant brown  eyes,  her  thick  red  mane,  the  splendour  of 
the  broad  body,  made  him  think  of  Kallikrates,  red  cats 
both  of  them.  But  Sylvia  was  not  as  restful  as  Kalli- 
krates. She  bounded  where  he  glided.  And  she  went 
for  her  father: 

"You  ought  to  come  up  to  town.  There  are  lots  of 
things  you  could  do  in  town.  Oh !  I  know,  it's  all  very 
well  "  (she  waved  away  the  Board  of  Control) ,  "  I  know 
you've  got  a  job  at  Ashford,  but  you're  not  in  the  Middle 
of  Things." 

Sir  Hugh  was  understood  to  say  that  when  things  were 
going  round,  the  middle  was  the  very  place  which  moved 
least. 


IN  ENGLAND  63 

But  Sylvia  was  not  mathematical.  She  became 
rhapsodic.  .  .  . 

"  In  London  there's  always  something  doing.  They're 
always  setting  up  boards,  calling  up  people,  getting 
people  to  do  things.  Societies  break  up  and  amalgamate. 
It's  exciting! " 

Sir  Hugh  smiled. 

"  I'm  too  old  to  get  excited,  Sylvia.  I  do  my  little  bit 
in  the  corner,  just  as  you  do  your  big  bit  in  the  middle." 

Sylvia  suspected  that  her  father  was  laughing  at  her, 
so  much  so  that  she  consulted  her  husband.  She  did 
not  as  a  rule  consult  Andrew  Jervaulx.  She  had  married 
him  rather  hurriedly,  after  he  told  her  that  unless  he  got 
married,  he  didn't  see  when  he  was  going  to  get  any 
more  leave,  and  couldn't  she  help  him  out?  She  had 
married  him  on  that.  She  liked  that  brutal  way  of 
putting  things,  and  she  found  a  rather  voluptuous  pleas- 
ure in  the  coarseness  of  the  young  engineer  with  the  stiff 
black  hair  and  the  chin  like  a  shovel. 

"  Doing  things?  "  said  Jervaulx,  "  I  dunno.  I  suppose 
you've  got  to  mess  about  and  keep  yourself  amused  while 
I'm  out  there.  Save  the  country  as  much  as  you  like, 
old  thing,  so  long  as  you  let  it  alone  when  I'm  on  short 
leave." 

"  Andy,  you're  no  patriot." 

"Of  course  I'm  no  patriot;  nobody's  a  patriot  in  this 
country,  unless  they're  forty-one  and  haven't  got  to  go. 
But  for  God's  sake  don't  talk  about  patriotism;  one  gets 
out  of  the  way  of  thinking  of  all  that  tommyrot  out  there: 
trying  to  find  whisky,  and  inspecting  the  men's  feet, 
that's  the  sort  of  thing  that  really  matters." 

"  But  the  Empire,"  said  Sylvia  feebly. 

"  Damn  the  Empire. —  Come  here,  old  girl."  The 
young  man  took  Sylvia  between  thumb  and  forefinger  by 


64  BLIND  ALLEY 

the  back  of  her  thick  white  neck,  and  bending  down  her 
head  with  an  air  of  cold  resolution  kissed  her  where  the 
red  curls  clustered  close.  "  You're  a  damn  fine  girl,"  he 
muttered  thickly. 

"  What  a  brute  you  are,  Andy,"  said  Sylvia,  with  a 
soft  laugh  of  surrender,  as  if  her  agitations  were  set  at 
rest  by  the  strong  urgency  of  the  man's  singler  mind. 

And  Lady  Oakley  tried  to  interest  Mrs.  Marchmont 
in  the  discussion  which  threatened  to  break  up  the  Com- 
mittee of  the  New  Hospital  at  Rye.  One  party  wanted 
a  dashing  staff  nurse  to  cheer  up  the  patients,  the  other 
felt  that  soldiers  generally  lived  evil  lives  and  should  be 
brought  into  contact  with  some  one  who  would  prepare 
them  for  a  better  land.  Lady  Oakley  aspired  to  some- 
thing less  mystical.  What  she  really  wanted  was  to 
appoint  Louise  Douglas,  so  as  to  please  Sir  Hugh.  Mrs. 
Marchmont  said  nothing.  She  did  not  like  Louise  much, 
and  it  annoyed  her  that  Lady  Oakley  should  not  under- 
stand why  her  husband  loved  Louise.  But  of  course  poor 
Lena  was  so  blind;  also  she  had  not  known  Mrs.  Douglas 
well.  Mrs.  Marchmont  found  her  old  dislike  of  Mrs. 
Douglas  very  helpful  during  that  awful  time:  hatred  is 
a  fine  antidote  to  grief. 

Meanwhile  Sir  Hugh,  on  the  Sunday  afternoon,  went 
with  Louise  along  the  Ridge  towards  Udimore.  More 
than  Monica,  Louise  gave  him  a  sense  of  complete  rest- 
fulness;  she  had  her  mother's  white  skin  and  almost 
black  hair;  she  did  not  talk  much;  she  had  not  Monica's 
gaiety,  but  when  he  tried  to  express  himself  to  himself, 
to  make  somebody  understand  the  hideousness  of  the 
world,  she  was  just  what  he  needed. 

"  You  see,  Louise,"  he  said,  his  eyes  fixed  on  the  moist 
brown  road,  "  we're  hanging  between  victory  and  defeat, 
and  nobody  knows  what  defeat  might  mean.  All  this 


IN  ENGLAND  65 

sort  of  thing,"  he  pointed  at  the  marshes  rolling  away 
towards  Winchelsea,  "  it's  not  that  it's  in  the  balance 
exactly.  It's  not  the  German  flag  I'm  afraid  of;  some- 
how it's  the  new  British  flag.  Do  you  understand?  " 

"  No,"  said  Louise.    "  Go  on." 

Sir  Hugh  tried  to,  but  he  could  not  explain  very  well. 
For  a  moment  he  wondered  whether  he  could  have  ex- 
plained to  Louise's  mother,  the  dead  woman  who  had 
always  seemed  to  understand,  yet  had  refused  herself  to 
him.  She  had  understood  everything  except  how  much 
he  wanted  her. 

"  I've  just  been  to  London,"  he  said.  "  Six  million 
screaming  rowdies.  Winning  the  war  as  if  they  were 
winning  a  sweepstakes.  Oh!  we're  in  a  corner,  we've 
got  to  fight,  but,  my  God!  why  have  we  got  to  fight  like 
rats?  Don't  you  see,  Louise,  we're  not  trying  to  make 
anything  out  of  this  war  —  I  mean  a  new  order  when 
there  won't  be  any  more  war.  It's  revenge  all  the  time, 
not  justice." 

"  Vengeance  is  Mine !  "  said  Louise  gently.  "  Don't 
you  think  He  meant  justice?  " 

"  I  don't  know  what  He  meant,"  sighed  Sir  Hugh. 
"  Perhaps  it  is  all  too  long  ago  for  anything  He  meant 
to  mean  anything  now.  Oh!  never  mind,"  he  added 
desperately,  "  come  down  into  the  meadow  and  see  the 
lambs." 

Louise  followed  him  without  comment;  she  had  the 
gifts  of  silence  and  acquiescence.  They  went  among  the 
lambs  that  leapt  on  their  straight,  woolly,  wooden  legs, 
like  toys,  and  stared  from  afar  with  inquisitive  eyes,  and 
leapt  away  on  springs,  more  than  ever  like  mechanical 
toys,  bleating,  to  the  side  of  their  large  mothers.  But 
all  through  the  meadow  one  lamb  followed  them  close, 
pitifully  crying,  for  its  mother  was  dead,  and  it  was 


66  BLIND  ALLEY 

being  bottle-fed.  It  was  willing  to  be  stroked,  and  it 
stirred  in  Sir  Hugh's  throat  that  large  thing  which  had 
risen  when  he  heard  the  bagpipes,  for  between  its  cries 
the  tiny  beast  tried  to  seize  his  finger  and  to  suck  it. 
In  the  midst  of  swooping  death,  the  lamb  was  struggling 
to  maintain  its  life. 

XIII 

SIR  HUGH  did  not  like  these  sittings  of  the  Military 
Tribunal.  So  far  he  had  attended  two.  It  was  vaguely 
disagreeable  to  sit  at  this  green  table,  surrounded  by 
half  a  dozen  men  who  shared  with  him  —  was  it  the 
responsibility  or  the  privilege  —  to  tell  these  young  men: 
"  You  must  go  out  there.  Whether  you  like  it  or  not. 
Leaving  behind  your  women,  your  businesses,  your  pleas- 
ures. Go  out  there,  and  be  shot  or  mangled.  We  send 
you  there.  We  stay  here.  We  are  forty-one.  We  are 
all  right." 

It  seemed  indecent,  this  dominance  of  age.  Oh!  yes, 
he  knew;  these  young  men  came  up  to  appeal;  they  were 
not  a  very  attractive  crowd  or  they  would  have  gone 
long  ago  of  their  own  free  will.  Shirkers  mostly  —  but 
still,  who  could  tell  whether,  if  this  war  had  broken  out 
twenty  years  before,  some  of  the  members  of  the  Tri- 
bunal might  not  themselves  have  stood  before  a  similar 
tribunal,  trying  to  get  off?  Perhaps  only  recruits  should 
sit  on  these  tribunals.  Perhaps  even  no  old  men  and  no 
women  ought  to  vote  for  peace  and  war. 

And  so,  when  that  morning  Sir  Hugh  hurried  through 
the  waiting  room,  he  tried  not  to  see  the  little  crowd. 
There  were  only  seven  or  eight  of  them,  and  three  women. 
It  was  a  horrible  idea  that  these  women  would  wait  in 
that  room,  while  their  men  went  inside  to  be  —  sentenced. 


IN  ENGLAND  67 

He  did  not  feel  like  the  chairman  of  the  Tribunal.  A 
queer  fancy  for  a  short  story  passed  through  his  mind; 
he  thought  of  a  magistrate,  who,  on  Judgment  Day,  auto- 
matically made  for  the  bench.  And  the  Recording  Angel 
kicked  him  into  the  dock. 

There  were  no  scruples  inside.  It  was  not  a  bad  tri- 
bunal. In  addition  to  Sir  Hugh  it  comprised  Colonel 
Macduff,  long  retired  to  Winchelsea  and  now  happily 
dug-out,  a  steam  baker,  a  big  builder  whose  activities 
radiated  from  Rye  to  Hastings,  and  two  country  gentle- 
men. Not  bad  people  any  of  them;  the  sort  of  people 
you  find  on  a  special  jury,  who  do  their  best,  and  are 
not  intolerably  sure  that  their  best  is  very  much.  As 
Sir  Hugh  looked  down  the  list  he  saw  the  names  of  two 
Knapenden  men.  One  was  Port,  claiming  for  two  sons 
on  occupational  grounds,  and  Cradoc,  conscientious 
objector. 

The  Tribunal  was  obviously  excited  about  Cradoc, 
though  it  tried  to  be  calm,  in  the  English  way.  Colonel 
Macduff  said:  "  Hum."  The  Military  Representative 
remarked  vaguely:  "We'll  soon  put  him  through  it," 
but  the  builder  more  crisply  stated  the  excitement  by 
remarking:  "Well,  Sir  Hugh,  I  suppose  we  can  make  a 
start?  " 

It  was  not  an  interesting  start.  The  first  two  claims 
were  a  Rye  claim  for  one-man  businesses,  sound  enough 
so  far  as  those  claims  went,  that  is  to  say  so  far  as  a 
one-man  business  can  be  looked  upon  as  anything  save 
a  ridiculous  survival. 

"  Three  months.    With  leave  to  apply  again." 

The  men  went  out  with  a  contented,  clucking  air,  like 
a  hen  that  has  at  last  laid  its  egg. 

There  was  more  difficulty  with  the  second  case,  that 
of  a  young  man  of  twenty-two,  a  very  pale,  underfed, 


68  BLIND  ALLEY 

ugly,  pimply  young  man,  who  outlined  in  a  shrill  and 
rapid  monotone  those  conditions  of  the  poor  which  are 
incredible  to  the  rich: 

"...  My  brother  having  joined  up  there's  only  me 
to  look  after  my  old  mother;  she's  sixty-seven,  so  she 
can't  get  the  old-age  pension,  and  you  can't  leave  her 
because  she  has  epileptic  fits,  and  she  might  fall  in  the 
fire,  and  my  two  sisters,  they  aren't  married  and  not 
likely  to  be,  because  they're  getting  on,  both  of  'em,  and 
one  of  them  has  varicose  veins  and  fainting  fits,  and  the 
other's  been  in  trouble  and  I've  got  to  keep  her  little  boy 
too,  delicate  he  was  from  the  beginning,  and  his  bowels 
never  was  right,  and  we  have  the  doctor  to  him  every 
week.  We  might  manage  with  the  panel,  except  I  was 
out  of  work  last  winter,  and  I  haven't  quite  worked  off 
what  I  got  in  debt  for,  and  ..." 

The  Tribunal  had  to  listen  to  the  end  which  came  only 
when  the  young  man  took  breath.  It  was  horrible,  all 
this. 

"  When  you  think  of  lives  like  these,"  murmured  Sir 
Hugh  to  Colonel  Macduff,  "  one  wonders  whether  it's 
worth  while  giving  them  exemption;  it  seems  they  might 
as  well  be  dead.  Still,  everything  wants  to  live,  I  don't 
know  why." 

"  Humph,"  said  the  Colonel,  "  by  the  look  of  him  he 
won't  make  much  of  a  soldier.  Let's  give  him  three 
months  and  see  him  again." 

Sir  Hugh  nodded.  After  all,  in  three  months  the 
mother  might  have  her  final  fit  and  simplify  the  prob- 
lem ;  more  likely,  though,  the  sister  would  get  into  trouble 
again,  piling  giant  responsibilities  on  rotten  shoulders, 
bred  rottenly,  in  a  rotten  system. 

Port  did  not  occupy  them  long.  The  handsome  old 
farmer  had  obviously  made  up  his  mind  to  stand  no 


IN  ENGLAND  69 

nonsense  from  the  Tribunal.  Vaguely  he  knew  his  power 
and  meant  to  use  it. 

"  It's  like  this,"  he  said,  sticking  out  his  beard,  "  if 
you  take  my  boy  Jim,  I've  got  to  kill  my  cows.  If  you 
take  Tom,  I've  got  nobody  to  plough.  If  you  take  'em 
both,  I'll  look  after  myself  by  running  the  market  gar- 
den. It's  as  you  think  right,  gentlemen.  No  boys  —  no 
milk,  no  barley,  no  roots.  That's  all  I've  got  to  say." 

The  Tribunal  became  thoughtful,  for  already  the  food 
scare  had  been  made  urgent  by  the  ever  more  successful 
U-boat.  The  Military  Representative  thought  it  right 
to  argue: 

"  It's  all  very  well,  Mr.  Port.  If  everybody  talked 
like  you  we  shouldn't  have  an  army  at  all." 

"  Very  likely,  sir,"  said  the  farmer.  "  Very  sorry,  sir, 
but  if  you  want  an  army  you've  got  to  feed  it.  If  you 
take  my  sons  you  get  no  food." 

"  Oh,  nonsense,  you  can  get  other  men,  older  men." 

"Yes,  sir,  very  likely,  sir.  Takes  a  strong  man  to 
drive  a  plough.  I'm  too  old  for  it  myself,  sir.  Take  it 
you've  done  a  bit  of  ploughing  in  your  time." 

The  Military  Representative,  ex-Captain  of  the  Vol- 
unteers and  wholesale  druggist,  made  a  deprecating  move- 
ment and  murmured  that  a  short  exemption  would  not 
be  opposed  and  that  he  would  try  to  arrange  substitution 
later.  The  Tribunal  was  greatly  relieved  when  Port 
stumped  out  in  his  hobnailed  boots,  which  seemed  to 
trample  on  all  these  torn-fool  demands  of  men  who 
couldn't  tell  oats  from  nasturtiums.  But  the  Tribunal 
was  quietly  quivering  with  excitement,  for  the  next  name 
was  Cradoc.  Their  first  conscientious  objector,  and  they 
did  not  know  how  to  deal  with  him.  They  had  read 
reports  in  the  newspapers  showing  the  sort  of  questions 
one  asked,  but  at  bottom  they  were  nervous. 


70  BLIND  ALLEY 

"  Those  fellows,"  growled  the  Colonel,  "  argue  the 
hind  leg  of  a  horse  off." 

And  the  steam  baker  murmured :  "  Now !  "  with  an  air 
of  taking  the  high  dive. 

When,  a  moment  later,  Cradoc  stood  before  them,  his 
small  thin  figure  rather  defiantly  erect,  and  a  cool  look 
in  his  eyes,  the  Tribunal  was  much  more  embarrassed 
than  the  appellant.  There  was  a  moment  of  hesitation. 
The  Tribunal  was  not  hostile,  but  it  was  so  nervous  that 
Colonel  Macduff  began  by  a  crude  remark,  as  is  the  way 
with  very  shy  people: 

''  You're  appealing  on  conscientious  grounds,  aren't 
you?  It  doesn't  bother  your  conscience  that  other  men 
should  go  and  fight  for  you." 

Cradoc  did  not  reply,  and  the  Tribunal  stirred  un- 
easily. After  a  moment  of  silence  Sir  Hugh  thought  it 
well  to  intervene. 

"Mr.  Cradoc,"  he  said,  "the  grounds  for  your  objec- 
tion are  of  course  not  fully  stated  in  your  claim.  Per- 
haps you  will  tell  us  exactly  why  you  conscientiously 
object  to  entering  an  army." 

"  It  isn't  a  very  long  story,"  said  Cradoc.  He  pulled 
at  his  ragged  black  moustache.  "  I  hold  that  all  war  is 
wrong  and  mistaken;  that  there  is  no  such  thing  as  a 
righteous  war;  that  murder  is  murder,  whether  legal  or 
not;  that  it  is  wrong  to  settle  an  international  dispute 
by  arms,  just  as  it  is  wrong  to  settle  a  private  quarrel  by 
fists.  The  latter,  gentlemen,  is  recognized  by  the  British 
laws,  which  forbid  two  men  to  settle  their  dispute  and 
compels  them  to  come  into  court;  my  conscience,  there- 
fore, being  a  logical  conscience,  tells  me  that  it  is  wrong 
for  two  nations  to  settle  their  private  quarrel  by  force, 
and  that  they  too  must  be  prepared  to  come  into  court. 
If,  therefore,  I  think  it  morally  wrong  that  two  nations 


IN  ENGLAND  71 

should  fight,  then  I  think  it  morally  wrong  that  I  should 
assist  one  of  them  to  fight.  Therefore,  I  conscientiously 
object  to  being  enlisted  in  an  army  which  is  going  to  do 
something  which  I  think  wrong.  That  is  my  case, 
gentlemen." 

The  Tribunal  hesitated  for  a  moment.  They  were 
anxious  to  be  fair,  and  they  saw  what  Cradoc  meant; 
what  troubled  them  was  that  though  they  were  inclined 
to  agree  with  him,  they  thought  he  was  wrong.  There 
must  be  a  trap  somewhere.  After  a  moment  one  of  the 
country  gentlemen  said: 

"  Yes,  I  see  your  point.  It's  all  very  well  in  theory, 
that  idea  of  not  fighting,  but  it  doesn't  work  out  in 
practice." 

"  May  I  suggest  that  if  a  thing  is  right  in  theory  it  is 
right  in  practice?  If  a  thing  does  not  work  out  in  prac- 
tice it  means  that  the  theory  is  bad." 

"  We  are  not  here  to  argue  about  practice  and  theory. 
The  fact  remains  that  your  country  is  engaged  in  a  life 
and  death  struggle  with  an  unscrupulous  and  powerful 
enemy,  and  you  ask  us  to  believe  that  your  conscience 
allows  you  to  let  other  men  go  out  and  fight  that  enemy 
while  you  stay  here  in  shelter.  That  is  your  position, 
is  it  not?  " 

"  Yes,  that  is  my  position." 

"  That's  a  funny  thing  for  your  conscience  to  tell  you, 
Mr.  Cradoc." 

"  No.  On  Saturday  afternoon  hundreds  of  men  from 
the  country  round  here  find  themselves  impelled  to  go 
to  Hastings  and  get  drunk.  My  conscience  does  not 
impel  me  to  do  anything  but  stay  at  home.  I  am  what  I 
am,  an  individual.  Why  should  I  do  what  the  rest  of 
the  world  does?  " 

"  I  don't  think,"  said  Sir  Hugh,  "  that  you  can  quite 


72  BLIND  ALLEY 

detach  yourself  from  your  country  like  that.  You  are  a 
British  citizen,  you  must  obey  the  laws." 

"  Yes,  unless  I  am  willing  to  pay  the  price  of  dis- 
obedience. If  my  conscience  tells  me  that  the  law  is  a 
bad  law,  I  am  doing  wrong  if  I  obey." 

"  Oh,  nonsense,"  said  the  builder  suddenly.  "  We  all 
obey  laws  we  don't  like." 

"  Not  all  of  us.  Sir  Edward  Carson  and  the  Ulster- 
men  didn't  like  Home  Rule,  even  though  an  Act  of  Par- 
liament was  passed  to  enforce  it.  So  they  took  arms  to 
smash  the  law.  General  Gough  and  his  officers  at  the 
Curragh  said  they  would  not  enforce  the  law.  The  Suf- 
fragettes broke  the  law.  The  Trade-Unions  broke  the 
law.  All  these  people  were  ready  to  suffer  for  it.  They 
did  what  they  thought  right:  why  should  I  not  do  what 
I  think  right?  " 

"  Now  don't  let's  wander  from  the  point,"  said  the 
other  country  gentleman.  "  Let's  look  at  things  as  they 
are.  If  we  didn't  raise  an  army  we  should  be  invaded 
by  Germany  and  I  suppose  annexed.  The  British  Em- 
pire would  become  a  German  colony." 

"  Yes." 

"  Is  that  all  you  have  to  say  to  such  an  idea?  Have 
you  no  use  for  English  liberty?  for  your  home?  your 
flag?  your  King?  " 

"  No.  I  am  what  I  am,  a  man.  I  happened  to  be 
born  in  Hastings;  I  might  have  been  born  in  Pekin.  I 
should  still  be  what  I  am,  whatever  the  colour  of  the  bit 
of  rag  they  call  a  flag  which  floated  over  my  head," 
asserted  Cradoc. 

"  Answer  the  question." 

"  I  am  answering,  as  well  as  I  can.  If  the  British 
Empire  were  annexed,  I  think  that  ploughmen  would  still 
plough  your  land,  that  I  would  still  sell  tea  and  sugar, 


IN  ENGLAND  73 

that  the  carpenter  whose  plane  I  can  hear  next  door 
would  still  plane  wood.  The  sunshine  would  still  be  sun- 
shine whatever  the  flag." 

The  steam  baker  was  impelled  to  come  down  to 
realities: 

"  You  seem  to  think  it  would  all  be  nice  and  easy  being 
conquered.  What  about  Belgium?  What  about  towns 
being  burnt  down?  What  about  scores  of  respectable 
shop-keepers  like  you  being  lined  up  against  a  wall  and 
shot  by  the  Huns?  What  about  babies  being  pitched  in 
the  air  and  spitted  on  bayonets?  " 

"  If  people  did  not  fight  those  things  would  not 
happen." 

"But  damn  it  all,  man!  "  cried  the  Military  Repre- 
sentative, "they  do  happen!  " 

"  Then  we  must  suffer  them.  I  shall  not  give  back 
life  to  a  Belgian  baby  by  killing  a  German  father.  We 
must  do  the  best  we  can,  and  if  we  do  not  kill  we  take 
out  of  other  men  the  impulse  to  kill.  You  think  that  by 
killing  other  men  you  will  teach  them  not  to  kill  you. 
It  is  wrong.  All  they  do  is  to  pull  themselves  together, 
get  into  a  corner  and  plot,  and  take  their  revenge  when 
they  can.  Revenge  in  turns,  that  has  been  the  history  of 
the  world  so  far." 

The  Tribunal  stared  at  this  sickly,  passionate  man. 
It  felt  very  discontented. 

"  Mr.  Cradoc,"  said  the  steam  baker,  "  try  and  think 
of  these  things  happening  to  yourself.  What  would  you 
do  if  a  German  soldier  were  to  try  and  outrage  your 
mother?  " 

"  I  should  restrain  him." 

"  By  force?  " 

"  Yes." 

There  was  a  stir  of  excitement  round  the  table. 


74  BLIND  ALLEY 

"  By  force,  eh?  I  thought  there  would  come  a  moment 
when  your  conscience  would  go  pop." 

The  grocer  looked  at  them  with  weary  eyes.  Could 
he  make  them  understand? 

"  Gentlemen,"  he  said,  "  I  do  want  you  to  see  what  I 
mean.  I  would  use  force  as  a  policeman  uses  force  to 
preserve  order.  But  I  should  not  kill.  Even  to  save 
my  mother  I  may  not  kill,  but  I  myself  can  be  killed. 
Letting  that  alone,  I  say  the  enemy  is  only  threatening 
my  life  as  a  soldier  because  he  is  afraid  that  I  am  threat- 
ening his,  because  his  nation  and  my  nation  have  started 
murdering  each  other,  so  that  it  all  comes  down  to  the 
first  murderer  being  the  one  who  gets  off.  If  we  don't 
threaten  him,  they  won't  threaten  us." 

"  But!  "  shouted  Colonel  Macduff  suddenly  and  rather 
angrily,  "  if  everybody  talked  like  you,  there'd  be  no 
war." 

Cradoc  caught  a  faint  smile  on  Sir  Hugh's  face.  The 
Colonel  had  got  hold  of  it  pretty  clearly,  so  clearly  that 
Cradoc  became  ironic  and  replied: 

"  No,  and  that  would  never  do." 

Cradoc 's  position  was  not  settled  without  some  debate. 
While  he  was  out  of  the  room,  the  Tribunal,  without 
being  in  any  way  converted,  showed  considerable  diverg- 
ence of  opinion. 

"The  man's  a  shirker,"  said  the  Colonel.  "It's  all 
very  well  his  talking!  They  all  talk,  that  sort.  Bernard 
Shaw,  modern  novels,  all  that  sort  of  rot." 

The  Military  Representative  grew  pressing  on  prac- 
tical grounds. 

"  May  I  suggest,  gentlemen,  that  you  can't  let  every- 
body off." 

The  builder  countered:  "  That's  not  the  question.  We 
let  everybody  off  if  we  like,"  and  bristled  at  the  Military 


IN  ENGLAND  75 

Representative  with  an  air  of  showing  him  that  the  civil 
power  was  still  top  dog. 

As  for  the  country  gentlemen,  they  were  silent,  as  they 
followed  the  argument  with  difficulty,  but  did  not  care  to 
say  so. 

"  It  seems  to  me,"  said  Sir  Hugh,  "that  it  all  comes 
down  to  this:  is  the  man's  objection  genuine,  or  not?  We 
know  his  views,  and  for  my  part  I  think  them  ridiculous. 
I  think  with  all  of  you  that  in  an  emergency  like  this  a 
man  must  sink  his  individuality  in  the  common  task, 
that  he  must  be  ready  to  give  up  the  privilege  of  indi- 
vidual conscience,  and  hand  himself  over  to  his  country 
to  whom  he  owes  a  duty  of  sacrifice  greater  than  the 
privilege  of  freedom  which  he  owes  to  himself." 

"  'Ear,  'ear,"  said  the  builder. 

"  Well,"  Sir  Hugh  went  on,  "  we  know  from  the  papers 
before  us  that  this  man's  objection  is  probably  not  made 
up  to  enable  him  to  dodge  military  service.  It  seems 
that  he  has  been  a  member  of  the  Independent  Labour 
Party  for  ten  years;  we  know  that  the  Socialist  party 
has  always  taken  this  sort  of  line  against  war.  There- 
fore the  objection  seems  genuine." 

"Socialist!"  cried  Colonel  Macduff.  "I  didn't  know 
the  fellow  was  a  Socialist." 

"  He  was  a  member  of  the  I.  L.  P." 

"  What's  the  LL.  P.?" 

"  Oh,  never  mind  that,"  said  the  steam  baker.  "You 
know  their  motto :  '  you  share  what  you  have  with  me 
and  I  don't  share  what  I  have  with  you. '  " 

Colonel  Macduff  took  no  further  part  in  the  debate 
beyond  occasional  detonations  sounding  something  like: 
"Socialists!  string  'em  up." 

The  steam  baker  and  the  Military  Representative  wan- 
•dered  off  into  a  loud  argument  which  began  with  the 


76  BLIND  ALLEY 

nationalisation  of  bakeries  and  degenerated  into  the  com- 
mercial difficulty  of  managing  multiple  shops.  The  coun- 
try gentlemen  were  conducting  a  private  conversation, 
wherein  occurred  the  name  of  a  horse  called  Tagalie, 
who  seemed  once  to  have  fluked  a  win  at  the  Derby. 

"  Of  course  they  didn't  put  her  up  for  the  Oaks." 

The  builder,  who  had  good  business  reasons  for  pleas- 
ing landowners,  suggested  to  Sir  Hugh  the  ideal  English 
solution:  adjourn  the  case  until  next  meeting.  Sir  Hugh 
was  profoundly  disturbed.  How  he  hated  this  business! 
Obviously  the  fellow  was  honest,  and  obviously  he  was 
wrong.  Fight  or  die,  that  was  the  rule  of  the  world. 
The  law  said  that  if  a  man  conscientiously  objected  he 
must  be  let  off:  well,  then?  He  decided  to  pull  the  meet- 
ing together  and  rapped  the  table. 

"  Gentlemen,  what  are  we  going  to  do?  " 

"  Appeal  refused,"  said  the  steam  baker  promptly. 

"  I  don't  think  we  can  do  that,"  said  Sir  Hugh. 

"  Well,  give  him  three  months'  exemption  with  leave 
to  apply  again,"  said  the  builder. 

"  Really,"  cried  the  Military  Representative,  "  gentle- 
men, you  can't  give  everybody  three  months  with  leave 
to  apply  again.  The  Kaiser's  not  giving  the  British 
Army  three  months." 

"  No,"  said  Sir  Hugh,  "  it  is  either  exempt  or  not 
exempt." 

"  I  say  no  exemption,"  remarked  one  of  the  country 
gentlemen. 

"  Look  here,"  said  Sir  Hugh,  "  do  you  believe  the  man 
is  telling  the  truth?  " 

"  Ye-s,  I  suppose  he  is.    Lunatic,  of  course." 

"  Well,  if  you  think  that,  we  must  let  him  off." 

"  I  protest,"  cried  the  Military  Representative,  "  you 
can't  let  men  off  like  that.  He  must  do  something." 


IN  ENGLAND  77 

"Ah!"  said  the  builder,  seizing  another  diplomatic 
opportunity,  "  let's  give  him  non-combatant  service." 

The  Tribunal  flung  itself  with  delight  upon  this  solu- 
tion, which  enabled  them  to  decide  without  saying  yes 
or  no.  Only  Sir  Hugh  felt  awkward.  Really  this  would 
not  do.  To  serve  or  not  to  serve,  that  was  the  way  he 
saw  it.  Conscience  was  a  radical  sort  of  thing.  He  was 
confirmed  in  his  view  when  Cradoc  came  in  again  and 
the  decision  was  communicated: 

"  Thank  you,  gentlemen;  you've  treated  me  very  fairly, 
but  I'd  like  to  say  I  can't  accept  it." 

"  Can't  accept  it?  "  cried  Colonel  Macduff.  "  Let  me 
tell  you,  sir,  you're  very  lucky  to  get  off  so  cheaply.  You 
can  go  into  the  R.  A.  M.  C.  or  something." 

Cradoc  shook  his  head. 

"  Thank  you,  gentlemen.  I  repeat  you  have  treated 
me  very  fairly,  but  I  can't  do  it.  I  can't  go  into  a 
munition  factory  and  make  shells  for  other  men  to  blow 
themselves  to  bits  with,  though  I  won't  fire  them  myself; 
and  I  won't  pick  up  men  on  the  battlefield  and  patch 
them  up  so  that  they  may  go  and  fight  again.  What- 
ever I  did  to  help  this  war  would,  I  think,  be  wrong." 

"  Well,  do  as  you  like,"  said  one  of  the  country  gentle- 
men. "  You  know  what  the  consequences  are.  If  you 
prefer  a  good  safe  gaol  it's  your  business." 

Cradoc  did  not  reply,  but  asked  for  leave  to  appeal, 
which  was  granted,  and  went  out. 

When,  a  little  later,  the  sitting  ended,  Sir  Hugh  crossed 
the  road  from  the  Court  Hall  towards  the  Mermaid, 
where  he  would  lunch.  He  wondered  why  he  should 
think  of  Pontius  Pilate.  The  fellow  was  wrong,  funda- 
mentally wrong.  Men  could  not  detach  themselves  from 
the  nation  like  that.  How  hateful  it  all  was,  this  busi- 
ness of  war,  this  concentration  on  killing,  this  withdrawal 


78  BLIND   ALLEY 

from  the  arts,  from  learning,  from  laughter,  love,  games, 
all  the  things  that  make  life  lovely.  And  yet  it  had  to 
be.  Germany  had  to  be  beaten  if  those  beautiful  things 
were  to  be  maintained. 

Standing  in  front  of  the  Court  Hall,  behind  piled  arms, 
was  a  detachment  of  the  Sussex  Coast,  healthy,  jolly- 
looking  boys,  not  heavy  countrymen,  probably  a  small 
contingent  from  the  Hastings  shops,  some  delicately  bred 
and  now  pleasantly  sunburnt.  Every  man  smiling.  And 
all  together  singing: 

"Another  little  drink,  another  little  drink, 
Another  little  drink  won't  do  us  any  harm." 

Heavens!  what  a  prelude  to  patriotism! 


XIV 

As  Cradoc  stood  on  the  steps  of  the  Court  Hall  in  the 
sweet  softness  of  the  April  morning,  he  was  impersonal, 
labouring  under  conflicting  impressions.  Yes;  they  had 
been  fair  enough.  Generous,  if  anything.  But  it  seemed 
queer  that  half  a  dozen  old  men  should  have  the  right 
to  send  young  men  to  die  for  a  cause  they  might  believe 
in,  and  in  most  cases  for  a  cause  they  knew  nothing 
about.  Old  men!  The  silly  old  men  who  rule  the  world, 
the  old  men  who  make  treaties  and  break  them,  and 
dodge  found  them,  with  a  dirty  sort  of  finesse  —  old  men, 
who  seemed  to  have  stopped  thinking  about  the  to- 
morrow of  the  world,  perhaps  because  their  to-morrow 
is  death,  old  men  blind  to  the  future,  ignorant  of  the 
past.  Experience !  What  bunkum  experience  was !  Once 
upon  a  time,  when  there  were  no  books,  of  course  experi- 
ence was  the  only  thing ;  it  was  right  then  that  the  elders 


IN  ENGLAND  79 

should  rule,  but  now,  when  all  the  knowledge  a  man 
needed  could  be  bought  for  about  a  sovereign,  there  they 
sat  with  their  rules  of  thumb,  their  precedents,  their  tra- 
ditions, their  habits,  all  the  dead  things.  And  look  what 
they  had  done  with  their  vaunted  experience,  people  like 
old  Bethmann-Hollweg,  old  Asquith,  that  theatrical  old 
fool  the  Kaiser,  and  Carson,  that  frenzied  mad  bull. 
Funny  creature,  man.  When  a  steam  boiler  got  enough 
experience  you  sent  it  to  the  scrap  heap;  when  a  man 
got  enough  experience  you  sent  him  to  the  House  of 
Lords. 

As  he  walked  away,  through  the  Elizabethan  loveliness 
of  Rye,  which  perfectly  outlines  the  past  that  stifles  the 
young  future,  Cradoc's  meditations  grew  more  personal. 
"  I  wonder,"  he  thought,  "  how  I  could  have  got  on  if 
instead  of  those  six  survivals  I  had  appeared  before  six 
young  men  in  khaki."  He  smiled.  "  There's  a  revolu- 
tionary idea  for  you.  Caesar  just  for  once  saluting  the 
morituri."  Then  he  thought:  "Well,  never  mind,  things 
must  take  their  course."  His  mind  was  empty  almost 
as  he  passed  the  Land  Gate  and  crossed  the  railway ;  his 
body  hinted  that  fresh  air  and  a  long  walk  would  clarify 
his  ideas.  Under  sentence  as  he  was,  he  found  himself 
cut  off  from  the  ordinary  world.  The  future  was  so  cer- 
tain that  the  past  came  up  in  higher  colours ;  fragments  of 
it  filled  his  mind.  He  thought  of  his  childhood,  in  his 
mother's  indescribably  filthy  little  general  shop,  in  a 
lane  off  High  Street.  He  remembered  the  smell;  stale 
tobacco,  vinegar,  dead  flies,  and  a  whiff  of  tar  from  out- 
side. Then,  errand  boy,  memories  of  a  furtive  grocer, 
of  evening  mysteries  consecrated  to  the  adulteration  of 
honey  by  means  of  treacle.  What  a  life  I  Seventy-four 
hours  a  week  in  the  shop,  and  Sunday  to  make  you  feel 
mean  and  ratlike  with  your  white  cheeks,  when  you  went 


80  BLIND  ALLEY 

out  into  the  country  for  a  walk  and  saw  a  great  thick 
labourer  with  a  face  like  a  copper  can,  chewing  his  pipe 
against  a  stile. 

And  yet  they  had  not  been  fruitless  years.  He  had 
seen  the  retail  trade  close,  its  smirking  subservience  to 
patronage,  its  arrogance  to  the  poor,  the  respectable  and 
solemn  lie  of  the  mangy  speculators  who  had  cornered 
dirty,  inconvenient  little  shops,  to  block  the  way  of  sup- 
plies between  the  big  modern  store  and  the  consumer. 
He  had  been  to  London,  too,  in  the  late  'nineties.  All 
through  the  South  African  war  he  had  roasted  coffee. 
But  those  were  not  bad  years.  In  those  days  one  could 
get  hold  of  the  Clarion  and  Blatchford's  "  Merrie  Eng- 
land." He  went  to  Fabian  meetings  and  was  vastly 
stimulated  by  the  cocky  speeches  of  an  inspired  stork 
called  Bernard  Shaw,  who  said  things  about  aristocrats 
and  capitalists  that  made  you  roar  with  laughter  and 
grind  your  teeth. 

He  was  in  the  fields  now ;  the  fresh  grass  crissed  under 
his  feet.  Still  egocentric,  Cradoc  thought: 

"  I  wish  I'd  stayed.  London  is  like  a  dunghill  quiver- 
ing with  its  own  corruption,  but  it's  alive.  Hastings! 
What  a  rat  hole!  "  He  had  come  back  to  Hastings  to 
bury  his  mother,  who  had  died  suddenly,  presumably 
overpowered  by  the  fumes  of  the  general  shop.  He  had 
come  back  without  love,  to  take  this  old  body  from  its 
dirt-caked  sheets,  this  old  body  which  had  reared  him, 
first  by  arm-dragging,  later  by  unbroken  yelping  and 
scolding  which  the  poor,  fretted  nerves  had  made  into  a 
habit.  He  had  brought  five  pounds  with  him  to  bury 
her.  Afterwards,  he  had  inventoried  the  furniture,  for 
a  little  of  it  was  worth  saving  from  the  municipal  de- 
structor, worth  selling  to  some  other  black,  bug-ridden 
home.  Here  a  surprise  awaited  him:  the  top  drawer  of 


IN  ENGLAND  81 

the  sideboard  opened  so  slowly  that  on  wrenching  it  fell 
out  and  emptied  its  contents.  From  under  a  dish  clout 
fell  a  small,  heavy  packet,  which  he  untied.  This  took 
a  long  time,  for  it  was  wrapped  up  in  five  different  paper 
coverings,  all  hard-tied  with  string.  The  innermost  core 
consisted  in  four  sovereigns,  eleven  shillings,  and  four- 
pence.  As  he  sorted  out  the  rest  of  the  contents  he  dis- 
covered a  broken  handbell:  to  the  clapper  was  tied 
another  little  parcel  containing  nine  and  tenpence.  Then 
Cradoc  grew  excited,  and  decided  to  search  the  house. 
It  took  him  three  days ;  Mrs.  Cradoc,  presumably  fearing 
thieves,  though  she  lived  a  life  of  abject  poverty,  had 
concealed  hoards  in  incredible  places.  Her  son  found 
small  sums  under  the  rotting  linoleum,  in  the  toes  of  old 
boots,  at  the  bottom  of  dusty  ornaments;  the  miser  had 
larded  her  house  with  money;  there  were  hoards  in  the 
coals,  and  an  unpleasant  adventure  up  the  chimney 
yielded  nearly  seven  pounds.  When  at  last  he  had  done, 
though  uncomfortably  conscious  that  Mrs.  Cradoc  must 
have  found  places  he  could  not  think  of,  he  had  collected 
nearly  three  hundred  pounds. 

Then  for  a  time  he  had  been  entirely  happy.  Accident 
led  him  to  Knapenden,  where  he  learned  that  old  Even- 
wood,  the  grocer,  was  going  to  bits,  what  with  drink  and 
a  bad  son,  and  that  the  new  settlement  of  Villa-Land 
offered  a  commercial  opportunity.  That  was  six  years 
ago,  when  he  was  twenty-eight.  The  young  man  set  up 
as  the  new  grocer,  calling  his  sister  from  service  at  Bex- 
hill.  He  had  made  a  living,  attained  membership  of  the 
Hastings  I.  L.  P.,  fallen  in  love  with  Molly  Hart  —  and 
then  This  had  come. 

He  stopped  with  rather  haggard  eyes  to  look  at  the 
endless  bleak  marshes,  so  monotonous,  broken  only  by 
little  curtains  of  willow  trees,  dotted  with  slow  sheep 


82  BLIND  ALLEY 

and  brooding,  long-horned  cattle.  "  This  war,"  he 
thought,  "  comes  upon  the  world  like  a  storm  on  the  sea. 
Worse,  for  nothing  can  stop  a  storm,  while  men  could 
have  stopped  the  war."  As  he  walked  on  towards  the 
ridge,  strangely  enough  his  thoughts  were  almost  the 
same  as  those  of  Sir  Hugh:  broken  infantry  retiring  along 
the  road,  with  artillery  racing  behind  the  rise,  cavalry 
sweeping  round  to  head  off  the  columns.  He  remembered 
that  Voltaire  suggested  the  world  was  the  dream  of  a 
giant  asleep  in  a  planet.  "  What  a  nightmare  the  fel- 
low's having,"  he  thought. 

And  as  he  went  on  the  excessive  individualism  of  the 
man,  his  purely  theoretic  appreciation  of  humanity,  that 
removed  him  from  their  passions,  their  prejudices,  made 
of  him  a  sham  man,  a  mechanical  toy.  He  was  a  man 
so  blinded  by  logic  to  the  impulses  of  others  that  he 
would  not  have  understood  if  told  that  despite  the  King's 
Regulations,  stretcher  bearers  would  pick  up  their  own 
men  first.  As  he  went,  stumbling  over  tussocks,  he 
dreamt  an  incredible  new  order,  a  world  where  no  man 
desired  wealth,  where  all  were  willing  to  work  together, 
who  had  no  impulse  towards  rivalry,  where  all  men  loved 
learning,  where  the  words  ambition,  passion,  jealousy, 
suspicion,  meant  nothing.  He  was  happy,  and  he  did 
not  realise  the  infinite  uselessness  of  these  rapid,  imag- 
inative leaps.  His  dream  obliterated  obstacles,  kings, 
banks,  small  traders,  peasant  landowners,  priestly  monop- 
olists of  revelation,  men  proud  of  race.  He  floated  in 
an  ethereal  world;  he  had  about  as  much  idea  of  the 
steps  to  bring  about  this  new  world  as  might  have  an 
archangel  taking  up  social  reform. 

His  interview  with  his  sister  pulled  him  down  to  earth. 
She  was  a  hard  little  dark  woman,  who  had  known 
romance  in  Bexhill,  with  a  Pierrot.  Then  the  Pierrot 


IN  ENGLAND  83 

moved  away;  the  five  shillings  a  week  were  not  paid;  the 
baby  died,  and  Miss  Cradoc  shut  her  mouth  like  a  rat 
trap.  So  shut  it  remained.  Now  she  kept  house  for  her 
brother,  clean  as  a  modern  workhouse  and  as  cheerful. 

"  How  did  you  get  on?  "  she  asked. 

"  Non-combatant  service." 

"  Ah.    What's  that?    Hospital  work?  » 

"  No,  I  shan't  take  it." 

"  What'll  happen  if  you  don't?  " 

"  Prison,  I  suppose." 

"Oh!  please  yourself.     I'll  mind  the  shop." 

Cradoc  smiled.  If  he  had  told  his  sister  that  he  was 
to  be  shot  at  dawn,  no  doubt  she  would  have  minded  the 
shop.  Still,  shops  had  to  be  minded,  and  in  a  way  old 
Ethel  had  got  hold  of  an  elementary  thing. 

Other  people,  it  seemed,  had  also  got  hold  of  elemen- 
tary things.  After  closing  the  shop  and  having  his  tea, 
he  crossed  the  Green  to  go  to  Ascalon  Farm.  He  was  to 
meet  Molly  that  night,  and  he  felt  they  must  have  it  out. 
He  was  not  excited  as  he  went  down  the  lane,  past  the 
blackthorn  bushes  bursting  into  bloom,  and  the  lean  ash 
trees  whose  buds  were  already  black.  So  he  was  not 
surprised  at  being  received  on  the  threshold  by  Hart, 
who  had  seen  him  coming.  The  stout  farmer  seemed  to 
have  expanded,  guarded  his  doorway  as  a  hen  covers  her 
chicks.  All  the  squat,  red  figure  said  was: 

"  Git  out." 

"  What  do  you  mean?  "  asked  Cradoc. 

"  What  I  say,"  replied  Hart,  with  an  air  of  completely 
clearing  up  the  question.  "  Git  out.  That's  all." 

"  Now  look  here,  Mr.  Hart,  this  is  all  very  well,  but 
before  I  get  out  there  are  one  or  two  little  things  we've 
got  to  settle.  One  thing,  rather,  and  that's  Molly.  She 
was  to  meet  me  up  the  lane." 


84  BLIND  ALLEY 

"  She  won't,"  said  Hart.  "  I'll  rive  the  guts  out  of  her 
if  she  does." 

A  despair  fell  over  Cradoc.  If  a  man  argued  with  him 
it  had  an  effect  on  him.  But  Hart  obviously  was  not  so 
affected.  How  could  he  get  at  him?  A  punch  in  the 
jaw?  That  might  not  help  matters  much,  and  Hart 
would  get  the  best  of  it.  Then,  in  self-contempt,  Cradoc 
discovered  the  way  to  Hart's  understanding: 

"  There's  another  thing  too:  you  owe  me  thirty  shil- 
lings for  groceries." 

"  Ah !  "  said  Hart,  his  sensitive  fibre  touched,  "  now 
you're  talking,  Mr.  Conscientious  Objector.  Come  inside 
and  have  your  dirty  money.  Suppose  you  have  got  to 
come  inside.  One  has  to  take  a  receipt  from  the  likes 
of  you." 

In  the  kitchen  Hart  took  out  with  much  ceremony  a 
large,  dirty  purse.  To  the  right  and  left  of  the  hearth 
sat  two  women.  One  was  Mrs.  Hart,  her  eyes  averted, 
steadily  knitting  a  gray  stocking.  Not  once  did  she  raise 
the  bent  head  on  which  the  tight-drawn  black  hair  lay 
as  if  polished.  On  the  other  side  sat  Molly,  short,  broad, 
milk-white,  under  her  loose  crown  of  tangled  chestnut 
hair.  She  was  reading  a  novelette,  and  from  time  to 
time  the  blue  eyes  looked  curiously  from  under  the  raised 
brows.  She  stirred  Cradoc.  How  could  he  tell  what 
was  her  attitude?  When  the  receipt  was  signed,  Cradoc 
said: 

"  Now,  Molly,  I'll  be  waiting  for  you  in  the  lane. 
You've  got  to  come;  you  promised,  you  know." 

As  he  went  he  heard  the  farmer  address  his  daughter: 

"  If  you  go,  I'll  break  every  bone  in  your  body." 

But  still  he  waited  in  the  cool  twilight.  He  knew  she 
would  come.  After  all  the  caresses  which  had  passed 
between  them,  she  must  come.  And,  indeed,  in  a  moment 


IN  ENGLAND  85 

he  saw  the  short  figure,  like  a  shadow  through  the  elm 
trees.  Then  she  was  quite  near  him,  and  he  put  out 
both  hands.  Cradoc,  in  that  moment,  had  an  aching 
need  of  her.  Not  only  because  she  was  his  love,  not 
only  because  the  broad  healthiness,  the  whiteness,  the 
plumpness  of  her  made  a  searching  appeal  to  the  nervous 
delicacy  of  the  city  dweller,  but  because  in  the  bleakness 
of  the  world  which  to-day  had  racked  him  he  hoped  to 
find  a  moment  of  forgetfulness  on  her  broad  breast. 
Then  she  stopped,  two  yards  away,  and  put  out  a  hand 
palm  outwards.  He  chose  to  misunderstand  her,  as  a 
sick  man  refuses  to  accept  the  doctor's  sentence: 

"  It  was  kind  of  you  to  come,"  he  said,  "  —  with  your 
father  threatening  you." 

"  He  ain't  threatening  me.    It's  all  right." 

"  But  he  said  he'd  ..." 

"  Said  he'd  rive  my  guts  out.  But  I  said  I  was  coming 
out  because  I  was  going  to  give  you  the  chuck,  and  you 
can  have  it."  She  made  as  if  to  turn.  "  Good-bye-ee!  " 

"  Molly ! "  cried  Cradoc.  How  funnily  his  voice 
squawked,  he  thought. 

"Oh,  I  don't  want  to  hear  any  more.  You  talk  too 
much,  that's  what  you  do.  Talking  comes  natural  to 
you  like  fighting  does  to  others." 

"  Don't  you  love  me  any  more,  Molly?  " 

She  evaded  him.  "  Do  you  think  I'm  going  to  have 
everybody  see  me  going  out  with  a  shirker?  Don't  you 
believe  it,  Mr.  Cradoc.  Something  in  khaki  is  more  my 
style.  Like  the  other  girls."  She  stopped,  and  as  if 
the  softness  of  the  evening  overcame  her  for  a  moment, 
her  voice  grew  gentler:  "Course  I  don't  say  —  if  you 
was  to  change  your  mind,  perhaps  I  might  change  mine 
too.  See  what  I  mean?  Khaki  or  blue,  that's  the 
ticket."  She  turned  and  disappeared  up  the  cart  track. 


86  BLIND  ALLEY 

For  a  long  time  the  ironic  little  song  that  died  away  with 
her  footsteps  rang  in  Cradoc's  ears: 

"  Good-bye,  little  girl,  good-bye, 
Bye  and  bye,  little  girl,  bye  and  bye, 
In  my  uniform  of  blue 
I'll  come  marching  back  to  you: 
Good-bye,  little  girl,  good-bye." 


XV 

THAT  night  Sutton  was  admitted  to  dine  with  the  upper 
servants,  and  Westcott,  in  her  new  blouse  of  Irish  lace, 
wearing  the  famous  Westcott  turquoise  and  sham  pearl 
necklace,  sat  by  his  side.  It  was  an  old  and  difficult 
question,  this  dinner  of  the  upper  servants  at  Knapenden 
Place.  Mr.  Lee  and  Mrs.  Marsden  had  had  many  anxious 
debates. 

"  We  can't  have  Mr.  Sutton,"  said  Mrs.  Marsden,  "  he 
is  a  footman." 

"  Groom  of  the  chamber,  ma'am,"  said  Lee,  "  not  foot- 
man." 

Mrs.  Marsden  waved  away  this  distinction. 

"  When  I  say  footman  I  mean  footman.  Wouldn't 
alter  it,  Mr.  Lee,  if  you  called  him  Emperor  of  China." 
Mrs.  Marsden  supported  her  arguments  with  instances 
taken  from  the  household  of  the  Duke  of  Shropshire; 
Lee  protested  that  at  Mr.  Mosenberg's,  at  Battle,  "  who, 
if  you  will  pardon  me,  ma'am,  could  buy  up  three  dukes, 
the  groom  of  the  chamber  did  dine."  It  had  extended 
over  months,  this  quarrel.  But  this  evening,  since  Mr. 
Sutton  was  in  khaki,  and  would  join  the  Sussex  Coast 
Regiment  next  day,  as  also  he  had,  in  the  words  of  Sir 
James  Barrie,  cast  a  favourable  eye  on  Westcott  ("  Bag- 


IN  ENGLAND  87 

gage,"  added  Mrs.  Marsden),  the  housekeeper  had  de- 
cided to  relax.  She  put  it  to  Mr.  Lee:  "  This  being 
war  time  I  have  resolved  to  overlook." 

And  so  it  was  a  cheerful  dinner  party  enough.  It 
began  at  9.30,  and  if  it  had  not  been  for  the  ribaldry 
of  Mr.  Temple,  the  chauffeur,  and  his  new  young  wife, 
it  would  have  extended  over  several  hours,  with  the 
assistance  of  port  and  cigars.  (Lee  was  entirely  honest, 
but  this  evening  he  also  had  resolved  to  overlook.) 

Westcott,  blue-eyed,  flaxen-haired,  with  a  prehensile 
way  of  slewing  her  eyes  sideways  at  the  men,  was  queen 
of  the  party.  She  did  not  say  very  much;  most  of  the 
conversation  was  confined  to  Mrs.  Marsden  and  Lee, 
who  had  many  memories  to  exchange  as  to  the  ways  of 
gentlemen,  and  gentlemen's  gentlemen.  Mr.  Temple  con- 
tributed regrettable  memories  of  what  happened  in  motor 
cars.  He  was  sternly  repressed  by  Mrs.  Marsden:  "  Be- 
fore a  young  gal,  Mr.  Temple,  please  don't  forget  your- 
self." And  tactfully  directed  the  conversation  to  the 
grapes  that  were  grown  on  the  Shropshire  estate. 

As  for  Mr.  Sutton,  he  felt  self-conscious,  elated,  and 
sure  that  in  khaki  his  rather  insufficient  chest  looked 
several  sizes  larger.  The  party  degenerated  a  little  when 
Sir  Hugh's  valet,  Ratby,  joined  them,  for  there  were 
cleavages  in  the  Knapenden  loyalty.  Temperaments 
were  discussed. 

"  Her  Ladyship,"  said  Westcott,  "  there's  only  one 
thing  can  be  said  about  'er;  her  temper's  'ot." 

Anecdotes  testified  to  the  incandescence  of  Lady  Oak- 
ley's temper.  It  was  not  like  Sir  Hugh. 

"  That  man's  an  angel,"  said  Mrs.  Marsden,  "  so  deter- 
mined, and  so  nice  to  cats,  and  all  dumb  animals,"  she 
added  feelingly.  "  I've  seen  him  carrying  Ginger  about 
in  his  arms  like  a  baby.  It  nearly  makes  one  weep." 


88  BLIND  ALLEY 

Mrs.  Marsden  illustrated  this  slightly,  while  Ratby,  ex- 
cavalryman,  engaged  in  a  fierce  dispute  with  the  chauf- 
feur as  to  the  stinking  tin  cans  he  passed  his  days  with. 
Meanwhile  the  butler  looked  benevolently  round,  slowly 
blinking  his  left  eye,  the  eyelashes  of  which,  as  he  pro- 
ceeded with  the  port,  seemed  to  have  got  strangely  stuck 
together.  It  was  then  Lee  decided  to  break  into  song. 
Westcott  got  up  quietly,  and  with  a  glance  at  Sutton 
went  out.  The  ex-groom  of  the  chamber  hesitated,  but 
as  now  all  had  taken  up  the  chorus: 

"  On  Monday  I  go  out  with  a  soldier, 
On  Tuesday  I  go  out  with  a  tar," 

he  softly  closed  the  door  behind  him,  with  a  delicious 
sense  of  Romeo  and  Juliet,  and  the  fast  life.  He  fol- 
lowed the  white  shadow  of  Westcott  down  the  corridors, 
through  the  lonely  pantry,  out  into  the  plantation.  It 
was  exquisite.  A  full  moon  hung  in  the  pale  blue  sky 
like  a  pan  of  burnished  metal,  and  Westcott,  who  seemed 
to  be  eluding  him  on  purpose,  danced  laughing  from  tree 
to  tree,  like  a  blooming  fairy  in  a  book.  He  was  rather 
unsteady,  and  as  he  chased  her  through  the  plantation, 
led  by  her  laughter,  he  swore  as  he  tripped  over  stumps: 

"  'Ere,"  he  whispered  at  length,  "  give  over,  Maud." 

"  You  can't  catch  me!  you  can't  catch  me!  "  came  the 
voice. 

He  lurched  forward  violently.  She  eluded  him,  but 
as  he  stopped  in  disgust,  as  if  about  to  return  to  the 
house,  Westcott  instinctively  knew  it,  felt  that  the  nymph 
should  now  allow  herself  to  be  caught.  She  was  by  his 
side,  blinding  him  with  both  hands.  The  satyr  in  khaki 
turned  with  a  growl  and  seized  her. 

At  last  she  freed  herself,  rubbing  her  cheeks  as  if  to 


IN  ENGLAND  89 

efface  his  kisses,  calling  him  a  great  brute,  and  telling 
him  that  if  he  didn't  behave  she  would  go  in.  Yet  she 
clung  to  the  khakied  arm.  He  said,  with  sudden  sus- 
picion: 

"  I  say,  Maudie,  there's  no  kid  in  this.    Is  there?  " 

"  What  do  you  mean?  "  said  Westcott,  with  the  wide 
eyes  of  innocence. 

"  What  about  Keele?  " 

"  Well,  what  about  him?  " 

"  Weren't  you  walking  out  with  him?  " 

"  Go  on,  you  great  silly,"  said  Westcott  as  she  jabbed 
the  man  in  the  ribs  with  her  elbow.  "  What's  he?  A 
common  farmer's  boy." 

"  There's  others  too,"  said  Sutton,  with  an  excess  of 
ferocity.  "  Temple's  married  now.  In  the  nick  of  time 
I  should  say.  They  used  to  talk  about  you  and  him. 
Tell  you  what,  I'm  going  out  to  a  place  where  they  stick 
men  with  bayonets.  When  I  come  back,  if  I  hear  of 
you  monkeying  round  with  anybody,  I'll  ..." 

"  What  will  you  do?  "  cried  the  girl,  clinging  to  him. 
Her  gaze  was  wild  and  frightened,  her  mouth  deliciously 
open  in  expectation. 

"  Do  you  in,"  said  Sutton.  He  seized  her  by  both 
arms. 

"  No,  you  won't,"  she  whispered.  "  You'll  be  my 
lonely  soldier-boy." 

"  Do  you  in,"  he  repeated,  shaking  her  a  little,  as  if 
he  had  not  heard  her,  and  drawing  her  closer  into  his 
arms.  "  Do  you  in,"  he  repeated  again,  more  hoarsely, 
as  he  pressed  his  mouth  upon  her  open  lips,  and  felt  her 
crunch  up  in  his  arms,  soft,  frightened,  reluctant,  and 
drawn  closer  to  him  in  her  desire  by  those  repulsions  and 
those  fears. 


90  BLIND  ALLEY 

XVI 

FRANK  COTTENHAM  slowed  up  the  car  as  he  turned 
into  the  approach  of  the  works;  then,  as  the  crowd  grew 
denser,  he  stopped  to  let  it  go  past.  The  girls  were 
coming  out  in  bunches,  in  running  single  units,  in  inter- 
twined, affectionate  couples.  Nearly  all  wore  their  over- 
alls, ugly  figures,  skinned  of  hair  by  their  close  caps,  and 
yet  unmasculine  in  their  bunchy  trousers.  Here  and 
there  bobbed  the  red  cap  of  a  girl  from  the  Woolwich 
inspection,  while  the  white  mass  was  flecked  also  by  the 
red  armlets  of  the  junior  charge  hands,  and  those  of  their 
seniors,  red  with  the  black  S.  Cottenham  sat  back, 
smiling,  in  the  middle  of  this  friendly  crowd,  every  one 
of  whom  looked  covertly,  or  insolently,  or  just  with  the 
curiosity  of  youth,  at  the  boss.  He  liked  this  swarming 
femininity,  and  let  his  eyes  rest  with  satisfaction  on  the 
young  faces,  the  white  skins,  that  somehow  resisted  the 
T.  N.  T.  colour,  the  dark  sullen  faces  that  were  animal 
and  pleasant;  he  liked  too,  the  older  women,  who  shoved 
their  way  through  the  crowd,  conscious  of  the  urgency  of 
their  business.  As  the  crowd  cleared  a  little  Irvine  said: 

"  I  think  we  can  go  on  now." 

"  One  moment,"  said  Cottenham  to  his  Manager, 
"  we'll  only  run  up  against  "  C  "  Division.  This  is  the 
"  B  "  crowd."  What  he  did  not  say  was  that  the  neigh- 
bourhood of  these  hundreds  of  young  women  created  in 
him  a  pleasant,  if  faint,  stir.  He  watched  them,  search- 
ing as  an  epicure  for  something  agreeable,  a  stray  golden 
curl,  long  fingers,  an  eye  shining  through  a  curtain  of 
eyelashes  like  the  moon  through  foliage.  For  Cotten- 
ham loved  women,  all  women;  he  adopted  the  French- 
man's saying  that  he  had  never  seen  an  ugly  woman. 
Working  girls  these,  a  coarse,  bawling  crowd  at  times, 


IN  ENGLAND  91 

capable  of  much  ugly  laughter,  ugly  attitudes,  jostlings, 
shovings,  breaking  out  now  and  then  into  language  he 
did  not  use.  But  still  women,  and  young,  and  so 
adorable. 

Cottenham  did  not,  as  a  matter  of  principle,  take 
much  notice  of  his  thirteen  hundred  hands.  He  knew 
it  did  not  do.  Besides,  as  he  told  himself  now  and  then, 
he  was  a  happy  man.  As  he  sat  in  the  car,  his  pasha 
glance  lying  light  over  these  women,  he  thought  with  a 
faint  sense  of  remorse  of  his  own  beautiful  dark  wife  in 
his  house  up  the  Medway,  the  creature  with  the  slumbrous 
dark  eyes,  that  were  so  alluring  and  dominant.  It 
seemed  unfair  that  he  should  think  of  her  now,  walking 
in  the  big  garden,  holding  up  one  of  his  three  small  chil- 
dren to  pull  at  the  blossoms  of  the  hawthorn;  that  she 
should  have  those  long,  lovely,  dark  hands,  with  finger- 
nails like  coral,  while  these  girls  rushed  and  hustled 
towards  the  rough  meats  of  the  canteen.  Still,  he  thought, 
"  It  won't  last.  What  I  see  before  me  is  the  seed  of  the 
future.  It'll  grow  up  into  thick,  strong  weed.  It  will 
choke  my  hawthorns,  before  it  has  done." 

As  "  C  "  Division  suddenly  burst  like  a  puff  of  white 
smoke  from  the  long  shop  strangely  camouflaged  in 
purple  and  green,  he  thought  of  the  coming  social  order 
that  was  going  to  play  the  devil  with  the  Cottenham 
works  and  with  other  damned  capitalists.  He  did  not 
mind  very  much,  but  he  could  not  help  fearing  that  with 
the  damned  capitalists  would  go  many  of  the  things  he 
loved,  good  manners,  the  odes  of  Horace,  and  the  Bach 
fugues  which,  serene  and  pitiless  as  Euclid,  measured  his 
daily  life.  He  sighed:  "  Well,  it'll  last  a  while  and  after 
me  — the  flood." 

Then  his  eyes,  which,  for  a  moment  had  fixed  on 
emptiness,  encountered  in  the  crowd  two  eyes.  He  had 


92  BLIND  ALLEY 

a  sense  of  shock.  He  repressed  an  impulse  to  turn 
round  and  look  after  the  girl:  it  would  have  been  fatal, 
with  the  whole  factory  watching  him.  But  though  he 
had  seen  her  only  as  for  a  moment  one  may  compass  a 
swallow's  flight,  she  lived  before  him  with  incredible 
obstinacy. 

Large  grey  eyes,  sorrowful  eyes.  Well,  no.  Not  sor- 
rowful eyes.  They  must  have  been  laughing  at  him, 
really,  under  their  long,  up-curling  lashes.  How  pale 
she  was !  That  made  her  broad  mouth  look  so  red.  The 
pointed  chin  too.  He  had  an  impression  of  strands  of 
red-brown  hair  escaping  from  under  the  cap;  an  impres- 
sion of  a  rather  tall  girl,  who  looked  thin  in  the  heavy 
overalls. 

As  if  to  rid  himself  of  the  over-strong  impression,  he 
pretended  to  himself  that  the  crowd  was  thinning,  started 
the  car,  which  whirred  slowly  into  the  works.  Soon  he 
was  in  his  office,  all  clear,  devoid  of  matches,  tobacco, 
pipe,  knife,  his  feet  clumsy  in  the  heavy  felt  shoes.  A 
ma^ss  of  correspondence,  unopened  brown  envelopes  "  On 
his  Majesty's  Service  ",  specimens  of  cartridge  bags,  little 
boxes  marked  "  Detonators — Dangerous  " —  all  this  cum- 
bered his  desk,  suggested  urgency.  But  for  a  moment 
Frank  Cottenham  sat  back  in  his  armchair  and  allowed 
himself  to  dream.  Then,  angrily,  he  thrust  the  dream 
away.  "  Don't  be  a  fool,"  he  told  himself  roughly,  and 
began  to  read  his  letters. 

But  all  that  morning  he  was  haunted.  It  was  not  a 
picture  hung  before  his  eyes;  rather  it  was  an  intangible 
presence  brooded  over  him.  •  He  fought  it.  He  called 
in  Irvine  unnecessarily;  he  dictated  unusually  prolix  let- 
ters, as  if  he  were  trying  to  detain  about  him  a  human 
presence,  as  if  afraid  to  remain  alone  with  that  sensa- 
tion. In  the  afternoon,  after  lunch,  and  a  complex  deal 


IN  ENGLAND  93 

with  the  owners  of  the  disused  wharfs  on  the  Stroud 
bank,  he  determined  to  face  it: 

"  Queer,  those  girls  of  the  people.  There  is  such  a 
finesse  about  some  of  them.  Something  delicate,  and 
suggestive  of  breed.  We  talk  of  the  aristocratic  type! 
Lord!  One  only  has  to  look  at  the  aristocratic  type  in  its 
lumpy  tweeds  and  its  big  boots,  its  big  hands,  its  ugly 
teeth  and  its  complexion  like  a  young  brick.  There  is 
more  aristocracy  in  many  a  London  shopgirl.  A  sort 
of  natural  aristocracy.  What  is  aristocracy,  after  all? 
Difference?  "  He  remembered  that  most  of  his  experi- 
ence had  lain  with  the  girls  of  the  people.  Often  he  had 
told  himself  that  he  had  coarse  tastes.  "  Nonsense,"  he 
remarked  aloud,  "  they've  got  a  natural  grace,  some  of 
them.  And  after  all,"  he  smiled,  "  we  call  them  the  girls 
of  the  people,  but  it's  a  wise  girl  who  knows  her  own 
father  if  her  mother  was  pretty." 

Behind  these  generalities  hung  still  the  memory  of  the 
face  he  had  seen.  "  Really,  old  chap,"  he  told  himself, 
"  this  won't  do.  It  won't  do  at  all.  If  she  weren't  in 
your  own  factory,  I  don't  say:  you  might  be  making  a 
silly  ass  of  yourself,  but  there  are  limits  to  silliness,  even 
in  asses.  Oh,  yes,"  he  answered  the  debater  in  his  heart, 
"  you  say  there's  nothing  in  it.  Well,  let  me  tell  you, 
as  a  man  who  has  had  more  to  do  with  women  than 
theoretical  intellectuals  like  you,  this  sort  of  thing  looks 
like  nothing.  But  when  you've  gone  on  a  bit  you  find  it 
has  grown.  Let  us  look  at  it  squarely.  Here  am  I, 
Frank  Cottenham,  thirty-nine,  shall  we  say  fairly  pre- 
sentable." He  looked  up  to  the  mirror  over  the  washing 
basin  and  saw  a  young-looking  man,  with  close  cut, 
rather  curly  brown  hair,  bright  blue  eyes,  a  clipped 
moustache,  and  an  expression  half-stern,  half-roguish. 
"  Yes,  fairly  presentable.  Thirty-nine.  Not  too  old  to 


94  BLIND  ALLEY 

make  a  fool  of  himself.  Third  proprietor  of  the  Cotten- 
ham  works;  good  old  explosive  works,  nearly  as  old  as 
Nobel's.  Therefore  known  to  most  of  Rochester,  part 
of  Chatham,  and  every  one  of  his  thirteen  hundred  girls. 
And  every  one  of  his  thirteen  hundred  girls'  best  friends, 
and  their  young  men,  and  their  mothers,  and  the  shop- 
keepers, and  the  shopkeepers'  mothers.  —  Do  you  really 
think,  Frank,  my  boy,  that  you  can  shed  a  friendly 
glance  in  this  abominable  little  town  without  it  getting 
into  the  paper?  No,  it  can't  be  done.  You  aren't  moral, 
but  you're  prudent,  as  is  the  way  with  your  class.  Chuck 
it,  I  say,  chuck  it." 

All  through  that  day  Cottenham  chucked  it.  He  in- 
sisted on  being  present  at  an  interview  with  the  account- 
ants of  the  Ministry  of  Munitions,  and  interfering  with 
the  elaborately  mendacious  plans  of  his  head  store- 
keeper; he  carpeted  Miss  Livingstone,  and  stung  her 
stern  soul  by  telling  her  that  she  coddled  the  girls  and 
that  the  Cottenham  Welfare  would  be  called  the  Cotton- 
wool affair  before  she'd  done. 

From  time  to  time  he  turned  upon  himself: 

"  But,  damn  it  all,  man,  you  can't  follow  the  girl  and 
track  her  down.  And  what  if  you  do?  At  your  age  and 
in  your  position  it's  impossible." 

Then  he  told  himself  that  he  did  not  attend  to  his  work 
properly  and  that  he  ought  to  be  seen  now  and  then  in 
the  clean  area.  So  he  toured  the  various  shops,  deter- 
mined to  find  fault:  "  I  suppose  I'll  run  across  her,"  he 
thought,  "  but  it  can't  be  helped,  I  ought  to  be  seen  in 
the  shops  now  and  then." 

Then,  having  visited  "  A "  and  "  B  "  divisions,  he 
changed  his  mind  and  decided  that  he  must  telephone 
London.  The  girls  at  the  branch  exchange  liked  and 
admired  their  employer;  there  was  a  considerable  dis- 


IN  ENGLAND  95 

cussion  later  on  at  tea:  what  could  have  happened  to 
make  Mr.  Cottenham  damn  the  telephone  exchange?  and 
damn  the  telephone?  and  damn  everything? 

XVII 

"  POOR  old  Bob,"  said  David  Marchmont,  as  he  puffed 
at  his  cigar. 

"  I  suppose  it's  sure  now,"  said  Lady  Oakley. 

"  Quite  sure.  Two  of  his  men  managed  to  escape  after 
being  kept  in  a  dug-out  for  two  days.  They  tried  to 
bring  his  body  in.  That's  how  they  got  caught." 

"  Hetty's  splendid,"  said  Sir  Hugh. 

"  Yes,  poor  old  mater.    Game  as  they  make  'em." 

"  It's  lucky  she's  got  you,"  said  Lady  Oakley,  but  there 
was  something  a  little  hostile  in  her  eyes  as  she  said 
this.  David,  in  his  blue  lounge  suit,  made  to  resemble  a 
naval  uniform,  but  devoid  of  gold  lace,  exquisitely  pol- 
ished and  hair-clipped,  eye-glassed,  clean-shaven,  like 
his  mother  in  a  way,  squirmed  in  his  chair. 

"Ah,  well,"  he  said  vaguely.  What  he  meant  was 
that  he  was  heavily  engaged  at  the  Admiralty,  and  that 
it  was  impossible  for  him  to  go  to  sea. 

The  three  were  sitting  after  lunch  in  the  Berkeley. 
Sir  Hugh  meditatively  sucked  his  cigar,  watching  the 
crowd,  the  laughing,  talkative,  well-dressed  crowd,  among 
which  passed  and  repassed  slim  girls,  in  coats  and  skirts 
and  the  fashionable  fur  tippets  of  the  day.  One  of  them 
came  up  to  him.  He  smiled. 

"  I've  bought  three  flags,  so  far,"  he  said,  opening  his 
coat  to  show  them  pinned  inside  the  lapel.    "  Still  — 
He  fumbled  in  his  pocket.    The  girl,  a  tall  dark  girl,  the 
sort  that  drives  cars  beyond  the  speed  limit  and  its 
owner  to  wonder  what  things  are  coming  to,  vigorously 


96  BLIND  ALLEY 

seized  his  lapel,  stuck  in  still  another  flag,  and  with  a 
businesslike  smile  acknowledged  the  heavy  drop  of  half- 
a- crown  into  her  money  box. 

"  It  makes  one  feel  all  the  worse,"  said  Lady  Oakley, 
"  with  things  going  on  as  they  are." 

"Ah,  yes,"  said  Marchmont,  "  Kut  —  Nasty  jar,  that. 
We  did  all  we  could,  you  know,  but  the  Tigris  is  so  low 
this  time  of  year  we  couldn't  get  a  gunboat  up." 

"  Oh,  I  don't  mean  only  Kut,"  said  Lady  Oakley 
petulantly.  "Of  course  it's  awful,  but  we'll  get  back  on 
the  Turk  before  we've  done.  It's  the  whole  thing.  Those 
Irish." 

"  Well,  we've  settled  the  rebels,"  said  Marchmont. 

"I  should  think  we  did,"  said  Lady  Oakley.  "We 
needn't  bother  about  a  handful  of  German  agents  in 
Dublin.  Of  course  we  settled  them.  And  I  hope  this 
Government  will  be  a  little  less  mealy-mouthed  than  it 
generally  is.  They  ought  to  be  shot,  every  one  of  'em." 

"  It  seems  a  great  pity,"  said  Sir  Hugh.  "  What  a 
mess  Ireland  is  in." 

"  There'd  be  no  mess,  Hugh,  if  there  was  no  disloyalty. 
The  Canadians  are  all  right ;  the  Australians  are  all  right, 
even  the  Boers  are  all  right.  I'd  like  to  know  what  the 
Irish  have  got  to  complain  about.  One  might  think  we 
illtreated  them.  Rights!  What  rights?  Can't  the  Irish 
go  into  the  Army?  the  Navy?  or  the  Church?  Haven't 
we  got  Irish  barristers?  There  are  Irishmen  in  the 
Admiralty.  Aren't  there,  David?  We  treat  them  like 
our  own.  What  do  they  want?  " 

"  It's  an  old  story,  Lena,"  said  Sir  Hugh,  as  he  brooded 
over  his  Liberal  Unionist  past.  "  A  complicated  story. 
I'm  beginning  to  think  we  have  made  rather  a  mess  of 
things  in  Ireland.  Sometimes  we  bully  them,  and  some- 
times we  pet  'em.  It  doesn't  seem  to  answer  either  way." 


IN  ENGLAND  97 

"  Of  course  it  doesn't  answer.  One  can't  get  on  with 
the  Irish.  They're  impossible  people.  Besides,  they've 
all  got  loose  mouths  and  bad  teeth." 

The  two  men  laughed  at  this  characteristically  Lena-ish 
argument. 

"  Well,"  said  Sir  Hugh,  "  I  don't  pretend  to  be  a  Home 
Ruler,  but  still,"  he  added,  for  the  moment  typically 
English  and  vague,  "  I  suppose  we  shall  have  to  do 
something  after  the  war." 

"  Yes,  after  the  war.  But  meanwhile  we've  got  to  get 
on  with  it.  We  haven't  got  time  for  the  Irish.  It's  all 
our  own  fault,"  added  Lady  Oakley.  "  No  propaganda 
in  Ireland,  I  don't  believe  they  know  what  the  war's 
about.  The  things  we  could  tell  them!  Only  last  week 
they  deported  twenty- five  thousand  women  from  Lille. 
Deported  to  what  fate?  I  hope  we'll  have  a  chance  of 
deporting  twenty-five  thousand  German  women.  That'll 
give  them  a  taste  of  it.  An  eye  for  an  eye,  that's  the 
only  way  with  the  Hun." 

Sir  Hugh  said  nothing.  Why  did  Cradoc's  remark: 
"  Revenge  in  turns,  that  is  the  history  of  the  world," 
suddenly  occur  to  him. 

Lady  Oakley  was  now  fairly  launched.  Diverging 
from  the  iniquity  of  having  exempted  Irishmen  from 
general  compulsion,  which  had  been  passed  two  days 
before,  she  was  now  heaping  scorn  and  hatred  upon  Mr. 
Asquith. 

"  The  audacity  of  the  man!  "  she  said.  "  It's  so  like 
him  trying  to  shuffle  and  squirm  out  of  necessity  by 
trying  to  get  hold  of  boys  of  seventeen.  ..." 

"  Eighteen,"  said  Sir  Hugh. 

"  Well,  children,  anyhow  and  time-expired  men,  men 
who've  done  their  bit,  rather  than  annoy  the  shirkers 
and  the  pro-Germans.  —  Why!  do  you  know  that  there 


98  BLIND   ALLEY 

are  thousands  of  young  men  in  this  country  who  got 
married  in  February  to  dodge  conscription?  " 

"  Awful  idea,  Aunt  Lena,"  said  David.  "  Think  of  the 
poor  young  man  in  February,  standing  in  front  of  his 
looking-glass  one  night,  and  saying:  '  The  trenches  or 
Mabel.  Which?7" 

"  And  a  lot  of  them  chose  the  trenches,"  said  Sir  Hugh, 
laughing. 

"  It's  all  very  well  laughing,"  said  Lady  Oakley.  "  It's 
serious,  very  serious.  Everything  is  in  an  awful  state. 
We  aren't  getting  on  with  the  war;  I  suppose  we're  wait- 
ing for  Verdun  to  fall ;  then  we'll  begin.  Spying  and 
plotting  everywhere.  And  the  Government  doing  noth- 
ing. Nothing!  A  blockade  about  as  useful  as  a  sieve. 
Ships  being  sunk  by  the  dozen  every  day.  Nobody  can 
say  we  aren't  trying  to  lose  the  war.  Oh,  yes,  we  are," 
said  Lady  Oakley  overriding  possible  objections.  "  The 
whole  country  is  going  mad.  Look  at  the  condition  of 
the  streets.  Have  you  read  General  Smith-Dorrien's 
article?  Have  you  heard  of  all  these  night  clubs,  which 
are  trapping  our  young  officers  and  making  them  tell  all 
they  know  after  the  poor  boys  have  had  too  much  cham- 
pagne? Female  harpies  and  German  agents  every  one 
of  them.  Thank  God !  though,  there  is  some  public  opin- 
ion left.  I  hear  they're  closing  the  promenades  in  the 
music  halls;  that'll  help  a  little,  but  why  they  don't  close 
Parliament  and  stop  this  talk-talk  I  don't  know." 

Then  Sylvia,  more  than  ever  handsome,  in  a  light 
musquash  coat,  drew  near  to  the  table  and  insisted  on 
selling  them  all  the  everlasting  flags. 

"  I've  got  to  get  rid  of  these  within  a  quarter  of  an 
hour.  I  can't  return  them,  and  I  can't  stay." 

"  You  seem  very  busy,  Sylvia,"  said  Sir  Hugh. 

"  Busy !     Father,  you  don't  know  what  work  is  at 


IN   ENGLAND  99 

Knapenden.  IVe  been  run  off  my  legs  this  morning, 
trying  to  catch  the  people  between  the  Piccadilly  en- 
trance and  the  Berkeley  Street  entrance.  Somebody 
didn't  turn  up,  and  I  had  to  try  for  both." 

"Seems  to  me  that  they  ought  to  have  got  hold  of 
puss-in-boots  for  a  job  like  that,"  said  Sir  Hugh. 

"  It  isn't  as  funny  as  it  sounds,  father.  And  this  after- 
noon IVe  got  a  Committee;  and  I  ought  to  look  in  at  my 
stall.  There's  the  tableaux,  too." 

"  What  tableaux?  "  asked  Lady  Oakley. 

"  Oh !  I  forgot  to  ask  you,  mother.  Can  you  send 
me  up  your  Persian  shawl?  I'm  appearing  as  India,  or 
Italy,  it  isn't  settled  which.  Oh !  "  and  she  made  a  con- 
vulsive dash  towards  the  entrance  to  stop  a  sly  and 
unflagged  brigadier. 

"  Marvellous  girl,"  said  Sir  Hugh.    "  Such  energy." 

"  Makes  one  feel  one's  getting  on  with  the  war,"  said 
David. 

"  Anyhow,  she  is  doing  something,"  said  Lady  Oakley, 
defending  her  young. 

When  Sylvia  returned  she  was  excited. 

"  He  gave  me  a  sovereign,  a  real  sovereign  in  gold,  the 
first  I've  seen  for  two  years.  And  he  said  he  was  keep- 
ing it  as  a  memento  of  the  times  before  the  war  —  but 
he'd  have  a  smile  from  me  instead,  as  they  didn't  make 
those  smiles  nowadays." 

All  three  laughed. 

"  Nice  man,"  said  Sylvia  thoughtfully.  Then  energy 
expelled  meditation.  "  In  five  minutes  I  must  go.  I 
simply  don't  know  what  to  do.  You've  no  idea  what  a 
worry  tableaux  are.  Everybody  wants  to  be  France,  or 
Belgium,  and  when  we  look  for  somebody  to  be  Mon- 
tenegro people  want  to  know  what  it  is.  Lady  Derwen 
thought  it  was  a  hair  wash.  I  wish  I  hadn't  told  her 


100  BLIND  ALLEY 

the  war  had  come  to  teach  people  geography.  She 
thought  I  was  alluding  to  the  Battersea  Board  School 
where  she  was  educated.  Oh,  dear,  I  must  go.  And 
I've  got  a  pal  of  Andy's  to  look  after,  too,  a  Guardee 
boy,  one  of  the  dinkiest  little  wounded  you  ever  knew." 

"Sylvia,"  said  Sir  Hugh  brutally,  "whenever  you're 
looking  after  a  pal  of  Andy's,  it's  always  a  wounded  one. 
I  believe  you  like  them  better  when  they're  wounded." 

"  Of  course  she  does,"  said  Lady  Oakley,  with  a  fond 
glance  at  her  handsome  daughter.  "  What  woman 
wouldn't?  " 

Sir  Hugh  looked  at  them  thoughtfully.  "  Do  you 
know?  "  he  said,  "  I  think  you  women  rather  enjoy  this 
war.  Oh,  don't  protest,  I  say  you're  enjoying  this  war, 
and  that's  why  you  like  the  wounded.  You're  savage 
creatures.  The  idea  of  blood  excites  you." 

"  Hugh!  how  can  you  be  so  horrid." 

"  I  may  be  horrid,  but  it's  true.  War  to  you  is  like  a 
rattling  good  railway  novel,  a  serial  story  with  a  fright- 
ful instalment  in  every  morning's  paper.  War  gives  you 
all  the  heroism,  and  excitement,  and  colour,  and  horror 
that  you  miss  in  your  ordinary  lives.  To  women  war  is 
the  grand  international  cinema." 

"  Don't  be  absurd,"  said  Lady  Oakley. 

David  Marchmont  looked  at  Sylvia  thoughtfully. 
Fine  girl.  A  sensual  looking  type.  Wonder  how  she 
got  on  with  that  black-browed  brute,  Jervaulx.  His  little 
hand  stroked  his  cheek  thoughtfully,  as  he  rested  upon 
her  a  rather  cloudy  blue  eye.  He  was  a  well-read  man, 
and  had  been  to  a  German  university.  Queer  idea,  that 
of  Sir  Hugh's;  there  was  something  like  that  in  Havelock 
Ellis,  or  was  it  Kraft  Ebbing?  He  wondered  whether 
that  was  why  the  women  rushed  to  be  nurses.  Was  it 
pity?  Or  was  it  a  sort  of  sensual  exhilaration?  Did  it 


IN  ENGLAND  •.;.':  ;-,;101 

caress  in  them  something  secret?  this  contact  with  agon- 
ised nerves  and  gaping  wounds.  A  sort  of  sadism? 

"  Father,"  said  Sylvia,  "  you  make  me  sick.  As  a 
punishment  you  must  buy  all  the  flags  I've  got  left.  Two 
pounds,  please." 

"  Oh,  I  say,  Sylvia,"  murmured  Sir  Hugh  as  he  searched 
for  his  pocketbook. 

"  It's  your  own  fault,  father.  Here  you  are,  take  them 
home.  You  can  go  round  Knapenden  selling  them. 
It'll  give  you  something  to  do." 

XVIII 

"  BUT  do  you  think  we  ought  to?  "  said  Lady  Oakley. 
"What  about  the  example." 

"  Lena,  I'm  sick  of  being  a  good  example.  Stephen 
hasn't  had  leave  for  six  and  a  half  months.  Now  is  our 
chance.  Ask  all  the  boys  and  all  the  girls;  order  a  leg 
of  mutton  or  rather  a  leg  of  beef;  let  the  innocence  of 
milk  and  the  avaricious  flow  of  whisky  be  familiar  in 
this  house.  Send  to  London  for  a  fatted  calf,  tie  ribbons 
round  the  gramophone." 

"  Don't  be  silly,  Hugh,"  said  Lady  Oakley,  smiling  at 
her  own  disapproval.  "  He  won't  expect  it  in  war  time." 

"  Oh,  yes,  he  will.  Our  young  soldier  will  be  a  thor- 
ough Nietzschean  when  he  comes  home.  He'll  have 
learnt  at  the  front  that  man  is  made  for  war  and  woman 
for  the  recreation  of  the  warrior." 

And  so  it  was.  When  Stephen,  extraordinarily  neat, 
as  subalterns  somehow  are  an  hour  after  leaving  the 
trenches,  landed  on  Snailham  platform,  prepared  to  be 
ironic,  to  comment  on:  "  The  old  folks  at  home,  waiting 
with  a  beating  heart  in  the  shadow  of  the  little  church 
nestling  in  the  dell,  while  the  old  coachman,  his  play- 


102  BLIND  ALLEY 

fellow  of  yore  —  etc.,"  he  was  received  by  a  miniature 
mob. 

"  Good  Lord!  "  he  said,  as  he  jumped  on  the  platform, 
and  was  confronted  with  his  father,  his  mother,  Sylvia, 
Jimmy  Quin,  Mary,  the  long-forgotten  Miss  Jesmond,  a 
multiplying  Station  Master,  a  combined  porter- shunter- 
signalman.  "Good  Lord!"  he  repeated,  "  where's  the 
illuminated  address?  My  good  people,  I  haven't  won 
the  V.  C." 

The  week  went  on  as  it  had  begun,  but  more  so.  Sir 
Hugh,  in1  pursuit  of  some  coherent  ideal,  kept  things 
going  with  a  swish.  He  became  the  organiser  of  com- 
pulsory games.  Petrol  was  somehow  discovered,  in  those 
uncontrolled  days  when  already  scarcity  prevailed. 
Temple  daily  threatened  to  strike,  because  the  gentlemen 
knocked  out  their  pipes  on  the  paint  of  the  car,  while 
the  young  ladies  outraged  his  pride  by  screaming  when- 
ever he  took  a  corner,  and  outraged  it  still  more  by 
making  insulting  remarks  when  the  overladen  car  tried 
to  crawl  up  hills.  The  weather  entered  into  the  con- 
spiracy. A  very  soft  southeaster  blew,  cloudless.  Black- 
thorn, hawthorn,  almond  tree  bent  under  fragrant  bur- 
dens. Horses  cast  by  the  army  reappeared.  There  were 
races.  A  donkey  steeplechase  through  the  kitchen  gar- 
den created  a  dreadful  scene  with  Peele.  And  one  day 
there  was  a  tug-of-war,  men  v.  women,  where  the  men 
pulled  with  one  hand  only,  on  grounds  of  chivalry,  they 
said,  but  really  because  Quin  was  winged  in  the  left  arm. 
The  girls  won  to  the  accompaniment  of  a  new  battle 
cry:  "A  Pankhurst!  a  Pankhurst!  "  And  every  night 
the  beribboned  gramophone  (Sir  Hugh  had  insisted  on 
decorating  it)  and  an  irrepressible  pianola  forced  the 
dancing.  At  the  week-end,  when  disorder  was  extended 
by  the  arrival  of  young  Moss,  convalescent  owing  to  a 


IN  ENGLAND  103 

slight  wound  in  the  head,  which,  he  said,  entitled  him  to 
describe  himself  as  the  Mad  Musician  of  the  Marshes, 
there  was  a  gala  night  devoted  to  the  performance  of  a 
musical  comedy  entitled  "  The  Merry  Wives  of  Coburg", 
words  by  James  Quin,  music  by  Moses  Moss  (for  the 
young  man  chose  to  carry  off  his  persuasion  by  exagger- 
ating it)  and  incidental  lyrics  by  Anybody. 

Sir  Hugh,  in  the  midst  of  the  pleasant  turmoil,  felt 
youthful  and  at  ease.  He  loved  this  atmosphere  of  dis- 
turbance; it  delighted  him  to  encounter,  in  this  big  solid 
house,  somebody  who  was  twenty -two  or  twenty;  as  he 
sat  in  his  study  with  the  door  open,  occasionally  tickling 
Kallikrates  behind  the  ear,  to  soothe  him  (for  Kalli- 
krates  spent  this  week  in  a  state  of  terror  and  exaspera- 
tion), he  collected  precious  specimens:  screams,  shrill 
laughter,  and  the  occasional  crash  of  an  ornament.  The 
only  blemish  was  provided  by  Quin  and  Miss  Moss,  on 
whom  Sir  Hugh  kept  a  special  watch,  for  youth's  gentle 
pander  hoped  to  catch  them  kissing.  They  seized  Kalli- 
krates by  his  sumptuous  tail,  hauled  him  out  from  under 
a  bookcase,  and  then  turned  him  loose  after  ignobly 
forcing  his  head  into  a  foolscap  envelope. 

In  a  sense,  as  Stephen  put  it,  that  was  the  best  turn  of 
the  week,  and  the  only  one  "  Father  hadn't  planned." 
The  terrified  cat  fled,  hurtled  against  the  brocade  curtains 
of  the  drawing-room,  climbed  them  to  the  very  top,  and 
then  stood  on  the  cornice  pole,  waving  from  left  to  right 
his  head  still  encased  in  the  envelope,  like  some  strange 
antediluvian  animal.  The  party  congregated  in  the 
drawing-room  to  get  him  down,  but  nothing  would  per- 
suade him. 

Cries  of  "  Milk!  "  failed  to  entice  him.  Miss  Jesmond 
suggested  a  walking  stick  and  cat's  meat,  but  still  Kalli- 
krates, unsteadily  poised  on  the  cornice  pole,  gave  vent 


104  BLIND  ALLEY 

only  to  melancholy  howls.  At  last,  after  a  quarter  of 
an  hour,  ladders  were  brought  by  Ratby  and  Peele,  and 
as  it  was  obvious  that  Kallikrates  would  cling  and 
scratch,  Stephen  and  Quin  insisted  on  going  up  provided 
with  trench  gloves  and  gas  masks.  Old  Toss  shambled 
in  and  sat  down,  contemplating  the  strangeness  of  man. 

As  they  went  up  young  Moss  played  on  the  piano  a 
gloomy  rendering  of  Excelsior.  .  .  . 

Lovely  young  people.  Lovely,  unslayable  youth,  ever- 
lastingly sprouting  from  the  bleeding  tree  of  life  as  green 
leaves  on  a  stump.  Sir  Hugh  wondered  whether'  they 
were  so  merry  only  because  they  knew  the  future  to  be 
so  uncertain.  He  thought  that:  "  Let  us  drink  and  be 
merry,  for  to-morrow  ..."  must  have  been  said  in 
the  midst  of  war. 

As  if  determined  to  increase  the  confusion,  Sir  Hugh 
was  not  content  with  these  for  Sunday  lunch.  A  more 
solid,  if  less  noisy  reinforcement  arrived  in  the  shape 
of  Mrs.  Moss,  Sir  John  and  Lady  Jesmond.  A  leaf  was 
put  into  the  dining-room  table,  and  indeed  it  looked  as 
if  Sir  Hugh's  jocular  leg  of  beef  would  be  wanted.  He 
sat  at  the  head  of  his  table:  in  these  dreary  two  years 
he  had  come  to  forget  that  there  were  such  things  as 
lunch  parties  of  fourteen.  He  did  not  say  very  much. 
In  the  contagious  noise  he  was  conscious  only  of  snatches 
of  conversation.  He  heard  Quin  raise  a  roar  of  laughter 
by  describing  the  death  of  the  mess  cook.  "  Fell  head 
first  into  his  pot;  spoiled  the  stew,  though." 

The  Observer  had  brought  increasingly  nervous  news 
of  the  Austrian  offensive  in  Italy,  and  there  still  was 
sporadic  but  formidable  fighting  round  Verdun.  A  latent 
excitement  hung  about  our  expected  offensive  that  never 
came. 

"  One  begins  to  think,"  said  Sir  John,  "  that  it'll  never 


IN  ENGLAND  105 

come  at  all.  It's  on  a  par  with  everything  we  do.  We 
never  handle  a  situation  until  it's  beyond  handling. 
Look  at  that  fellow  Tino!  we  ought  to  string  him  up." 

•"  We  do  what  we  can,  Sir,"  said  Quin  naughtily. 
"  We've  called  our  mess  cat  '  Tino' ;  his  morals  are 
awful." 

Sir  John  blew  and  glowered.  He  did  not  like  young 
men.  He  responded  more  cheerfully  to  Lady  Oakley, 
who  imparted  the  pleasant  news  that  the  local  con- 
scientious objector,  Cradoc,  had  appealed  in  vain  and 
had  been  handed  over  at  Rye. 

"  I  don't  suppose  they'll  make  a  soldier  of  him, 
though,"  she  added.  "  That  sort  of  man  prefers  to  be 
kept  in  gaol  at  the  expense  of  his  country." 

The  word  expense  moved  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Moss.  Sir 
Hugh  caught  a  note  of  anxiety  in  their  reference  to  the 
income  tax,  which  had  just  been  raised  as  high  as  four 
and  six,  to  say  nothing  of  supertax.  Young  Moss  was 
apologising  to  Louise  Douglas. 

"  Make  allowance  for  my  antiquities,  do.  They  were 
brought  up  to  worship  the  golden  calf,  but  I  was  brought 
up  to  roast  it." 

Louise  said  nothing,  but  rested  on  him  the  uncompre- 
hending gaze  of  her  soft  eyes.  He  felt  that  she  did  not 
understand  him,  but  sympathised  with  him  all  the  same. 

There  was  Quin  being  flippant  again !  "  Adorable 
gypsy  boy!  "  thought  Sir  Hugh.  "  What  was  that?  .  .  ." 

"...  We  found  out  that  every  Sunday  morning  the 
Huns  used  to  meet  in  a  communication  trench  and  hold 
a  service.  Rattling  good  hymns  they  were  too.  Came 
in  handy:  as  soon  as  we  spotted  them  the  R.  F.  A.  put 
down  a  few  shells  on  that  corner  to  encourage  their 
aspirations  to  a  better  world." 

Everybody  laughed,  but  somehow  this  struck  Sir  Hugh 


106  BLIND  ALLEY 

as  unpleasant.  Then  he  reproached  himself.  "  What  an 
old  stuck  pig  of  a  Victorian  I  am !  "  he  thought.  "  Is 
not  a  shell  the  best  offering  moderns  can  think  of  to  the 
God  of  Battles?  " 

Indeed,  a  certain  bitterness  was  creeping  into  the  con- 
versation; only  one  young  couple  was  silent,  Sylvia  and 
Mr.  March,  a  tall,  thin,  young  gunner,  who  seemed 
frightened  of  Mrs.  Jervaulx,  of  her  dominating  beauty. 
The  young  man  was  so  shy  that  he  made  a  sensation. 
Just  as  Lady  Oakley  was  declaring  that  the  girl  drivers, 
girl  lift  attendants,  and  so  forth,  were  creating  a  revolu- 
tion in  female  independence,  March  burst  forth  in  a 
harsh,  toneless  voice  that  secured  silence. 

"  Men  are  brutes.  I  remember  a  month  ago.  I  lost 
my  field  glasses  and  my  purse.  I'd  been  laid  out  by  the 
wind  of  a  shell,  just  for  a  moment.  No  damage,  but 
they  thought  I  was  done  in.  I  wasn't  really,  but  the 
R.  A.  M.  C.  cleared  me  out  nicely.  Went  over  my 
pockets  like  a  swell  mob.  Only  thing  they  forgot  was 
my  clothes,  which  was  pretty  decent  of  them  considering 
we  call  'em  Rob  Any  Man's  Corpse." 

Lady  Oakley  flung  herself  into  the  gap  which  this 
anecdote  created,  and  initiated  a  vigorous  discussion  on 
war  books.  "  Ordeal  by  Battle",  was  her  favourite,  but 
Mrs.  Moss  held  for  "Between  the  Lines." 

"  So  graphic,"  she  said,  and  at  intervals,  "  so  graphic." 

Lady  Jesmond  spoke  up  for  "  Gallipoli."  "  It  makes 
one  realise  the  poetry  of  the  war." 

"  Ah,"  said  Mrs.  Moss,  "  Boyd  Cable  is  so  graphic." 

Then  came  Stephen's  outburst.  Fortunately  none  save 
Louise,  who  sat  by  his  side,  heard  the  first  words: 

"  So  graphic !  so  Daily  Graphic !  "  His  voice  grew 
louder:  "All  that  sort  of  thing,"  he  said,  "it's  tosh. 
Fleet  Street  slush.  There's  only  one  kind  of  war  book; 


IN  ENGLAND  107 

Haig  sends  you  a  chapter  of  that  every  day.  I  can  tell 
you  that  out  there  war  books  make  us  tired.  Fellows  out 
there  don't  want  war  books.  They  write  'em,  in  Flanders 
ink,  one  quarter  blood  and  three  quarters  mud." 

The  party  stared  at  the  young  man,  and  for  the  first 
time  Sir  Hugh  discerned  in  him  a  change.  He  looked 
pale  under  the  sunburn,  more  hawk-like  than  ever  about 
the  nose,  as  if  savagery  had  crept  into  the  flippant  boy. 
Stephen  stared  at  his  plate  and  went  on: 

"  There's  things  they  don't  put  into  the  war  books, 
because  they  aren't  nice  and  cleaned  up,  and  they'd. inter- 
fere with  the  circulation.  Fellows  out  there  don't  sit  for 
Bairnsfather,  stick  on  dummy  whiskers,  and  juggle  with 
grenades;  they  don't  wash  night  and  morning  and  put  on 
a  clean  shirt  and  a  noble  Sunday-school  expression  as 
patented  by  Mr.  Eric  Kennington.  They  aren't  fighting 
for  the  right;  fighting  for  their  grub's  more  in  their  line. 
They  don't  talk  about  clean  peace;  they  bail  their 
boots  out  and  try  to  keep  the  rats  off  their  faces  while 
they  sleep." 

"  Stephen,  old  chap,"  said  Sir  Hugh.  But  the  youth 
went  on,  entranced: 

"  Over  here  you  think  war's  a  revue.  Millions  of 
people  sitting  in  the  stalls,  in  London,  looking  on.  And 
people  like  Ian  Hay  keeping  up  the  idea  that  war's  a 
manly  sport;  if  only  you  keep  your  soul  white,  and  play 
the  game  like  Christian  gentlemen,  you'll  come  out  with 
your  self-respect  and  half  a  dozen  medals.  —  Fight  the 
Germans  according  to  the  precepts  of  Doctor  Arnold, 
fair  and  square,  a  good  blow  between  the  eyes,  and  shake 
hands  after,  no  malice.  War  books  make  me  sick. 
Those  people  would  be  poetic  about  Charles  Peace. 
Fighting  like  gentlemen!  The  English  Tommy  as  na- 
ture's gentleman!  Idealistic  bank  clerks!  Temporary 


108  BLIND  ALLEY 

gentlemen  out  there,  temporary  fools  here.  Don't  let's 
pretend!  Don't  let's  be  literary  till  it's  over,  till  they've 
done  fighting.  They  don't  fight  like  knights  in  a  beastly 
tournament,  but  like  rats  in  a  common  drain;  that's  more 
like  it,  bayoneting  men  in  the  back  instead  of  the  front, 
because  it's  safer;  that's  more  like  it  —  hitting  below 
the  belt  when  you  get  a  chance,  because  it's  softer." 

XIX 

THE  May  day  surrounded  the  young  people  with  a 
droughty  fire.  The  sun  fell  in  shafts  of  brass  from  the 
polished  vault  of  the  sky.  They  went  in  a  straggling 
file  along  the  lanes  north  of  Udimore  Ridge;  in  the 
ardent  afternoon  the  party  lagged;  it  tended  to  break  up 
into  twos  and  threes,  until  they  were  but  specks  upon 
the  grass  paths,  male  grey  or  blue  flannel,  feminine  skirts 
of  white  serge,  and  bright  sweaters.  Ahead,  paced  by 
Miss  Jesmond's  long  stride,  went  Stephen  and  Louise,  he 
moody  and  sunken  in  some  private  reverie,  she  solicitous, 
white  and  cool  as  a  water  lily. 

"  The  worst  of  this  part  of  the  country,"  said  Miss 
Jesmond,  "  is  the  huntin'  's  so  poor.  Too  much  plough, 
to  begin  with;  those  small  farms  have  cut  up  the  coun- 
try, so  you  never  seem  to  get  away.  And  the  wire! 
now  they're  even  puttin'  up  wire!  " 

"  You  haven't  been  long  at  Northiam?  "  asked  Louise. 

"  No.  Only  a  year.  But  father  is  talkin'  of  goin'  back 
to  Leicestershire.  Wish  he  would.  Remember  our  last 
day,  in  February,  just  before  the  frost  started;  the  fox 
went  away  from  Grinton's  Wood,  you  know,  the  other 
side  of  Brede;  down  the  slope  he  went,  hounds  on  the 
top  of  him;  didn't  seem  to  be  a  trier;  they  looked  like 
choppin'  him  before  he'd  got  away  more  than  a  couple 


IN  ENGLAND  109 

of  fields  —  and  then  there  we  were  in  the  middle  of  the 
dykes !  At  the  first  dyke  the  take-off  was  beastly  greasy, 
and  my  old  Dolly  put  in  straight  in  it.  Oh!  what  a 
day!" 

"  Did  you  get  him  in  the  end?  "  asked  Louise  absently. 
She  did  not  hunt. 

"  Rather  not.  He  went  to  ground  somewhere  below 
the  windmill." 

"  Is  the  Auctioneer  still  a  Radical?  "  asked  Stephen, 
alluding  to  internal  troubles  on  the  Rural  District 
Council. 

They  talked  village  politics,  listless  in  the  heat.  But 
Stephen  did  not  care  much;  he  was  amused  only  when 
Sir  John  himself  foamed  and  raved  at  the  upstart  mem- 
ber. The  talk  fell  to  the  two  girls. 

"  I  hear  skirts  are  to  be  skimpy  this  autumn,"  said 
Miss  Jesmond. 

"Oh!  I'm  rather  glad.  Don't  you  think  they'd  got 
too  full?  "  Louise  replied. 

"  Perhaps.  Anyhow,  it'll  be  a  change.  Only,  there's 
this:  will  drapery  go  in  for  evening  frocks?  " 

Stephen  had  lagged  behind,  swinging  his  stick,  lan- 
guidly decapitating  the  tall  thistles  about  to  flower. 
Over  his  shoulder  he  could  see  Monica,  head  bent,  listen- 
ing to  Moss,  who  gesticulated  a  little. 

The  young  Jew  talked  well  and  knew  it.  Just  then, 
as  often,  music  was  in  his  mind. 

"  It's  hard  on  a  man,"  he  said,  "  to  be  a  musician. 
People  don't  take  him  seriously.  If  a  fellow's  literary, 
it's  not  so  bad;  it  comes  the  way  of  his  job  to  take  an 
interest  in  politics  and  all  that;  people  think  he's  potty, 
but  they  do  listen  a  bit." 

"  But  everybody  likes  music,"  replied  Monica  insin- 
cerely, as  she  cared  for  it  not  at  all. 


110  BLIND  ALLEY 

"  Likes !  yes,  likes.  As  they  like  chocolate  and  revues. 
No,  Miss  Oakley,  people  care  for  music  as  little  as  for 
musicians.  They  despise  us,  even  more  than  the  paint- 
ers; somehow  the  organ-grinder's  lower  down  than 
the  pavement  artist.  Oh,  it's  because  they  don't  know." 
His  voice  grew  soft  and  fervent.  "  It  makes  me  un- 
happy to  find  them  deaf  to  the  language  of  life.  To 
think  that  people  can  listen  to  the  adagio  in  Beethoven's 
Sonata  in  F  —  and  they  don't  cry!  They  don't  dance 
with  the  '  Pastorale ! '  They  hear  the  second  movement 
of  the  '  Moonlight ',  and  they  don't  crow  and  clap  their 
hands.  Oh,  they've  sung  in  vain  —  Brahms,  Bach, 
Mozart,  all  of  them  —  Do  you  think  there'd  be  a  David 
to  sing  and  dance  before  the  Tabernacle  if  they  carried 
it  to  the  Albert  Hall?  " 

Monica  laughed.  She  liked  this  dark,  solemn  young 
man,  and  it  pleased  her  to  feel  the  caress  of  his  brown 
eyes.  So  she  led  him  to  talk  on;  she  was  soothed  by 
the  full,  throaty  voice  that  rose  and  fell  in  metric 
cadences. 

Behind  them  walked  Miss  Moss,  with  Quin,  stopping 
often  by  the  wayside,  for  the  girl  was  teaching  the  Lon- 
doner the  names  of  the  wild  flowers. 

"  What's  that?  "  she  asked. 

"  A  baby  thistle,"  plunged  Quin. 

"  Not  at  all.    It's  Knapweed." 

"  Knapweed.    Good.    Knapweed.    I'll   remember." 

"  You'd  better,"  said  Miss  Moss,  soft  and  severe.  "  I 
shan't  tell  you  more  than  three  times."  She  was  very 
lovely,  white-skinned,  black-haired,  with  immense  eyes 
brown  as  a  pool  in  shadow.  She  stirred  the  young  man. 
"  And  that,"  said  Miss  Moss,  bending  to  pluck  a  tiny 
purple  flower,  "  I  couldn't  expect  you  to  know  that.  It's 
ground  ivy." 


IN  ENGLAND  111 

"  Ground  ivy,"  he  repeated  vaguely,  enraptured  by  her 
warm  softness. 

"  Yes.    And  look  as  if  you  were  attending." 

"  I  can't,"  he  muttered.  "  You're  the  only  flower  the 
name  of  which  I  shall  remember  forever." 

"  Don't  be  absurd."  But  she  smiled,  and  for  some 
time  they  went  in  silence,  through  thickets  of  hazel. 

"  What's  that?  "  he  asked,  determined  to  make  her 
speak,  if  only  to  watch  the  movement  of  her  vivid  lips. 

"  Flowering  nettle,  ignoramus."  She  bent  to  pluck  the 
little  yellow  pagoda,  as  did  he.  Their  hands  touched. 
Flushing,  she  turned  away. 

"  We  must  go  on,  and  catch  up  the  others." 

He  seized  her  hand.  His  speech  was  thick  with  emo- 
tion. He  drew  her  towards  him. 

"  No!  "  she  whispered,  "  no,"  suddenly  taut.  She  was 
strong  and  removed.  Quin  did  not  understand  the  in- 
tense reserve  of  the  women  of  her  race ;  so  tried  again  to 
clasp  her.  But  she  snatched  her  hand  away.  "  No," 
she  murmured,  soft  and  hoarse.  "  No,  Mr.  Quin.  There, 
don't  look  angry.  Learn  your  lessons.  That  little  purple 
thing,  like  a  neglected  sweet  pea,  that's  vetch." 

"  I'm  not  angry,"  he  murmured,  and  for  a  moment 
looked  so  forlorn  that,  with  a  sudden  gesture  of  affection, 
of  pity,  the  girl  whispered: 

"Wild  thyme.  Smell  how  sweet  it  is,"  and  brushed 
her  hand  across  his  lips. 

Far  behind  them,  almost  silent,  full  of  mutual  aware- 
ness, came  Sylvia  and  March,  who  watched  every  move- 
ment of  the  deep  shoulders  in  the  green  sweater,  drew 
close  and  receded  in  distracted  terror  and  delight.  He 
recognised  the  thrall  that  settled  over  him:  "  Like  a 
moth,"  he  thought  uneasily.  "  Like  a  moth."  But  he 
enjoyed  the  thrall,  and  Sylvia,  conscious  and  secure, 


BLIND  ALLEY 

flung  side  glances  at  the  handsome  face,  that  was  narrow 
and  thin.  She  was  of  those  women  who  are  stirred  only 
by  one  whom  they  stir.  Yet  his  silence  disquieted  her; 
the  exquisite  intensity  of  his  abasement  awoke  in  her 
an  uncomfortable  responsibility.  She  asked  him  ques- 
tions, indiscreet  questions ;  she  was  like  a  man  who  tears 
away  a  woman's  veil  in  his  haste  to  kiss  her  lips. 

"  I'm  twenty -three,"  he  replied. 

"  So'm  I,"  murmured  Sylvia,  and  felt  their  intimacy 
grow.  "  But  somehow  you  don't  seem  it." 

"  Oh,  well,"  he  said,  after  a  long  time.  "  I  haven't 
done  with  the  'Varsity  yet.  I'm  not  grown  up,  I  sup- 
pose." He  felt  very  humble.  "You  can't  understand, 
Mrs.  Jervaulx;  my  people  —  they're  old-fashioned, 
rather." 

"  Tell  me  about  them,"  said  Sylvia.  She  was  not  with- 
out design;  she  knew  that  men  talk  willingly  of  them- 
selves, yet  she  was  honest  in  that  moment:  she  wanted 
to  know  all  he  would  tell,  that  nervous  boy.  Like  a 
lovely,  shying  horse. 

"  There's  nothing  to  tell,"  said  March,  defending  his 
modesty. 

But  Sylvia  fixecj  on  him  eyes  that  smouldered  with 
cupidity.  Phrase  by  phrase  she  drew  from  him  a  pic- 
ture of  the  old  couple  in  the  North,  —  rich,  idle,  sunken 
in  local  charity,  isolated  by  Puritanic  disapproval  of 
their  neighbours,  and  loving  Oliver  March  with  Mosaic 
pride  and  cruelty. 

"They  mean  well,"  said  the  youth.  "But  father 
wanted  me  to  be  good.  When  I  was  a  kid  he  used  to 
lick  me  quite  three  times  a  week." 

"What  a  shame!" 

"  No  —  that  is  —  oh,  it's  so  good  of  you,"  he  cried,  and 
she  thought  she  saw  a  tear  on  the  lashes  that  shadowed 


IN  ENGLAND  113 

the  flushed  cheek.  "  Nobody  but  you  ever  wanted  to 
know  about  me." 

Sylvia  felt  her  heart  grow  large  in  her  breast.  They 
were  passing  a  curtain  of  willows.  Nobody  could  see 
them.  But  no;  she  was  not  afraid  of  that.  She  was 
afraid  of  giving  way  to  her  impulse.  She  was  glad,  as  if 
escaped,  when  they  reached  the  open  field.  She  walked 
quickly,  to  rejoin  the  others. 

Already  the  party  was  noisily  unpacking  the  hampers 
which  Temple  had  brought  in  the  car;  Miss  Jesmond  at 
once  organised  with  great  violence.  Seeking  the  pic- 
turesque she  had  prohibited  thermos  flasks;  she  was  full 
of  orders: 

"  Mr.  Oakley,  please  find  a  couple  of  big  stones.  And 
dead  wood.  We  shall  want  more  dead  wood.  Go  and 
fine  some  wood,  Mr.  Moss." 

"  What !  burn  the  home  of  a  hamadryad  1  "  Mr.  Moss 
was  shocked. 

"  You  mean  the  home  of  a  woodlouse.  Now  hurry  up. 
Louise,  where  are  the  matches?  Monica,  you  might  set 
out  the  plates ;  and  Mr.  Quin,  try  and  look  busy  even  if 
you  aren't." 

The  party  was  immensely  noisy  as  it  gathered  in  a 
clearing  round  the  big  stones  upon  which  the  kettle 
boiled  over  a  pile  of  twigs.  The  foliage  was  still  young 
and  threw  slight  shadows;  the  birch  leaves  alone  moved 
softly.  The  company  laughed  at  everything,  ate  enor- 
mously of  jam  sandwiches,  fruit  salad,  brown  bread 
crumbling  under  caviare,  great  spoonfuls  of  clotted  cream, 
and  strawberries,  cherries ;  the  kettle  bubbled  and  hissed ; 
they  filled  tumblers  of  cider  cup  that  rattled  with  ground 
ice. 

"Ah!"  cried  Quin,  "three  cheers  for  Epicurus,  for 
Apollo!  No!  for  Dionysus,  whom  the  barbarians  term 


114  BLIND  ALLEY 

Bacchus.  Hail,  son  of  Semele!  press  for  us  the  grape 
of  Naxos,  scent  the  honey  of  Hymettus.  ..." 

"  Shut  up !  "  roared  in  concert  the  other  undergrad- 
uates, ".  .  .  let  thy  staff  with  pine-cone  crowned  and 
entwined  in  ivy  .  .  . " 

Then  almost  everybody  flung  wood,  bread  and  sugar 
at  the  revellers.  March,  who  sat  silent  and  enchained 
by  Sylvia's  side,  flung  himself  upon  Quin,  thus  escaping 
his  exquisite  bonds.  But  as  Quin  still  bellowed  rhetoric 
they  smacked  him  with  napkins,  thrust  a  spoon  down  his 
back  and  filled  his  hair  with  burrs.  At  last  he  released 
himself  and  gravely  remarked: 

"  There  was  a  young  fellow  of  Udimore  ..." 

"  Limericks !  "  cried  Sylvia,  forgetting  March.  She 
adored  limericks,  especially  limericks  for  two.  For  some 
time  the  limerick  club  argued  ferociously. 

"  Who'd  plumbed  this  old  world  to  the  core,"  suggested 
Stephen. 

"  Rot!  "  cried  March,  still  a  free  man. 

"  He  said:  To  succeed,  You  must  bathe  in  the  Brede  " 
.  .  .  volunteered  Miss  Moss. 

"  You  just  stick  to  woman's  sphere,"  said  her  brother 
rudely.  "  Here,  I've  got  it:  But  a  pair  of  grey  eyes, 
That  were  deep  as  the  skies  ..." 

A  yell  of  derision  interrupted  him,  but  Monica  blushed. 
She  was  happy ;  a  heat  mist  hung  in  the  trees ;  she  could 
hear  Louise  and  Miss  Jesmond  talking  clothes. 

"  No,"  said  Miss  Jesmond  firmly.  "  A  theatrical  dress- 
maker will  always  overdo  it  when  it  comes  to  an  after- 
noon dress.  But  there's  nobody  like  them  for  evening 
frocks." 

Monica's  eyes  met  Stephen's.  He  smiled.  How  lov- 
able he  was.  For  a  moment  she  watched  Quin,  a  little 
jealously;  Miss  Moss  had  hung  a  cherry  from  a  twig  and 


IN  ENGLAND  115 

was  angling  over  the  young  man's  face.  He  snapped  at 
the  fruit  as  a  trout  at  a  fly;  the  girl  flung  back  her 
swelling  neck  as  she  laughed.  She  did  not  see  March 
flush  as  he  handed  Sylvia  a  tumbler  of  cider  cup  and 
for  a  second  touched  her  finger  tips. 

Soon  the  party  straggled  through  the  wood  into  the 
fields.  The  loveliness  of  the  afternoon  repressed  the 
crudity  of  their  youth;  they  marvelled  at  the  delicacy 
of  the  grasshoppers  and  picked  shy  columbine.  A  corner 
of  the  field  was  thick  with  pink  campion;  the  men 
plucked  great  bunches  of  it  and  wreathed  in  the  blossoms 
the  heads  of  the  girls,  who  laughed  and  protested.  Then 
all  stopped  before  a  wild-rose  bush,  laden  with  vermilion 
puffballs  of  blight.  Quin  plucked  a  long  branch,  wove 
it  into  a  thorny  crown,  which  he  hung  as  a  votive  offer- 
ing upon  the  lowest  bough  of  an  oak. 

"  How  beautiful  it  is,"  he  said,  as  he  fingered  the 
soft,  scarlet  home  of  the  insect,  "  and  yet  it's  just  blight! 
How  Elizabethan!  Moss!  let  us  sing  to  it — " 

Slowly  he  composed  the  lines,  while  Moss  sung  a  lilt- 
ing melody: 

"  Blight  upon  the  roses,  blight  in  May, 

(Merrily,  merrily) 
Mother  and  daughter  of  my  own  decay, 

(Drearily,  drearily) 
Rosy  is  my  quarry,  rosy  is  her  lip, 

(Rosily,  rosily) 
Dewy  is  her  fragrance,  dew  from  her  I  sip, 

(Dewily,  dewily) ." 


They  went  slowly  through  the  fields.  The  sun  was 
sinking  beyond  the  ridge,  picking  out  in  black  the  squat 
tower  of  Brede  church.  Sylvia  and  March  had  out- 
stripped the  others;  they  were  followed  only  by  the  dis- 


116  BLIND  ALLEY 

tant  voices  and  the  young  laughter  upon  the  cooling 
wind.  Silently  they  passed  into  the  curtain  of  willows 
beyond  which  ran  a  brook,  walking  fast,  as  if  escaping, 
as  if  determined  to  defeat  themselves  by  flight.  But, 
just  as  they  were  about  to  pass  beyond  the  willows, 
they  stopped  as  in  accord,  for  a  moment  paused  as  if 
asking  of  each  other  an  impossible  respite.  Then,  with 
a  little  shiver,  Sylvia  seized  the  fair,  shrinking  head, 
drew  it  down,  and  with  a  little  cry,  half  joyful,  half 
despairing,  pressed  her  lips  to  his.  The  youth  cried  out 
as  she  clasped  him,  his  conquest  and  his  conqueror. 

XX 

WITH  a  deft,  half-automatic  movement  Monica  seized 
the  long  wooden  mould  in  which  were  sunk  the  twenty 
little  cambric  bags  which  had  just  been  placed  at  her 
side.  Her  right  hand,  that  rested  on  the  wooden  lever 
of  the  press,  brought  down  the  wooden  plunger  just  as 
the  mould,  sliding  between  its  wooden  guides,  placed 
itself  so  that  the  first  recess  received  the  stroke  of  the 
plunger.  It  had  fascinated  her,  this  work,  in  the  begin- 
ning, so  apparently  easy,  so  exacting  in  accuracy.  In 
the  early  days,  nearly  two  months  before,  when  hers  had 
been  the  mean  tasks,  the  endless  weighing  of  the  small 
T.  N.  T.  charges,  later  the  equally  monotonous  loading 
of  the  cambric  bags  with  their  exquisitely  correct  charges, 
she  had  sometimes  looked  at  the  press  girls  with  the 
respect  that  overcomes  a  G.  P.  when  a  Harley  Street 
specialist  speaks.  For  pressing  demanded  the  develop- 
ment of  multifarious  instincts.  When  she  brought  in 
the  loaded  moulds  she  sometimes  wasted  a  minute,  until 
the  charge  hand  fussed  and  began  to  stare  at  her.  It 
was  fascinating  to  watch  the  presser  slide  the  mould 


IN  ENGLAND  117 

under  the  plunger,  so  exactly  that  the  plunger  would  not 
catch  the  edges  of  the  wooden  die,  and  bring  down  the 
lever  as  if  she  were  thinking  of  something  else.  There 
was  not  a  sixteenth  of  an  inch  to  spare,  and  this  acrobat 
never  failed.  She  did  not  catch  the  edges;  her  stroke 
never  failed;  there  was  hardly  any  noise  save  the  swift, 
consecutive  thuds  as  the  plunger  came  down,  pressing 
to  its  exact  length  and  density  the  little  charge  —  it  was 
like  a  conjuring  trick.  Monica  had  almost  a  sense  of 
emptiness  when  the  twenty  were  done.  The  sudden 
interruption  of  the  rapid,  harmonious  movement,  essence 
of  perfect  industrial  work,  left  her  suspended. 

"  It's  a  long  time  ago,"  she  thought,  as  her  hands, 
undirected  by  her  brain,  pulled  at  the  lever  and  pushed 
forward  the  mould.  "  It's  easy,"  she  thought.  "  I'm  a 
machine  now,  I  suppose." 

She  did  not  dislike  being  a  machine.  The  continuous, 
regular  work  that  left  her  mind  unencumbered,  satisfied 
in  her  the  need  for  occupation.  Without  knowing  it, 
she  had  been  rather  unhappy  and  very  bored  at  Knap- 
enden  during  those  two  years,  when  she  had  played  with 
the  war  at  relief  centres.  Now,  every  day,  from  eight 
to  six,  with  an  hour  off  for  dinner,  she  felt  in  it,  and 
somehow  the  war  oppressed  her  less.  By  gaining  contact 
with  it,  she  was  half  escaping  it.  Miss  Livingstone  was 
right  the  other  day  when  she  said:  "  The  war!  we've  got 
nothing  to  do  with  the  war.  All  we  care  about  is 
munitions." 

Indeed  Monica  found  munitions  strangely  impersonal. 
She  could  not  connect  these  little  bags  with  fire  and 
death.  She  filled  them  with  T.  N.  T.,  just  as  she  might 
have  filled  tins  with  tomatoes.  They  had  become  just 
things.  And  she  liked  her  little  charges;  they  had 
idiosyncracies,  troubles  of  their  own;  the  fine  powder 


118  BLIND  ALLEY 

was  wayward  as  a  poet.  Indeed,  at  that  moment,  she 
struck  one  of  the  strange  moods  of  the  explosive.  Her 
newly  sensitive  right  hand  told  her  as  the  plunger  came 
down  that  the  stroke  was  short.  She  stopped  and  turned 
to  Miss  Hayes,  who,  at  the  end  of  the  shop,  was  gauging 
test  samples.  Answering  her  look,  Miss  Hayes  came  to 
the  bench. 

"  What  is  it?  "  she  said. 

Monica  pointed  to  the  plunger  sunken  into  the  mould. 
There  was  a  gap  of  one  eighth  of  an  inch  between  the 
edge  of  the  mould  and  the  course  stroke  of  the  plunger. 

"  Oh,"  said  Miss  Hayes,  "  grade's  varying  again.  It's 
really  too  bad  of  them  to  expect  us  to  put  this  coarse 
stuff  through.  Let  me  have  a  try."  Shifting  the  mould 
forward,  Miss  Hayes  pressed  the  next  bag.  Again  the 
plunger  failed  to  travel  its  course.  "  Oh,  well/'  she  said, 
"  put  it  aside.  What  is  the  lot  number?  " 

"  F.16,"  said  Monica,  turning  up  the  mould  to  see  the 
label. 

Miss  Hayes  flushed  with  annoyance.  She  had  soft 
dark  eyes  and  beautiful  curly  brown  hair,  which  no  cap 
could  restrain,  but  the  length  and  flatness  of  her  chin 
revealed  a  secret  hot  temper. 

"  It's  too  bad,  it's  really  too  bad,  I've  told  shop  twice 
this  morning  to  stop  the  F.16.  I'll  go  to  unit  about  it," 
she  cried,  as  she  violently  pulled  at  the  wooden  swing 
door. 

"  Cheero,"  said  Monica's  neighbour,  as  she  pushed 
away  her  mould,  "  mine's  F.16,  too.  Girls,  girls, *it's  a 
blooming  bank  holiday."  One  after  another  they  pushed 
aside  the  moulds  loaded  with  the  unworkable  explosive, 

"  Let's  have  a  sing-song,  girls,"  bellowed  Monica's 
neighbour.  She  was  good-looking,  but  rather  stout; 
Monica  found  the  pink  and  white  cheeks  and  brilliant 


IN  ENGLAND  119 

yellow  hair  irresistible,  and  she  adored  the  mischievous 
little  amber  eyes. 

"  Miss  Badger,"  said  a  girl  on  the  other  side,  "I'm 
surprised  at  you." 

But  Miss  Badger  (for  this  was  the  fair-haired  girl), 
was  taking  no  notice,  slid  back  her  bench,  and  without 
regard  for  factory  regulations  dumped  to  the  right  and 
left  of  her  mould  two  enormous,  felt-shod  feet,  tilted, 
and  clasping  her  hands  behind  her  head,  luxuriously 
expanded  her  vast  bust,  and  in  a  sepulchral  bellow 
began: 

"  I  want  to  go  back, 
I  want  to  go  back, 
I  want  to  go  to  Tennessee." 

"  Shut  up!    Hold  yer  row!  "  came  from  various  parts 
of  the  shop.    "You  wait,  if  Maisie-Aisie  catches  you!  " 
"  This  is  my  day  out,"  remarked  Miss  Badger. 

"  I  want  to  go  back, 
I  want  to  go  back, 
I  want  to  go  to  Tennessee." 

"  Ain't  she  a  cure?  "  said  Miss  Penn,  who  owned  the 
ugliest  nose,  the  worst  teeth,  and  the  greatest  speed  and 
conscientiousness  of  the  whole  shop. 

Then  Pollie  Westfield  leapt  up  from  her  bench,  rushed 
across  to  the  singer,  and  tempted  by  her  attitude  brought 
down  a  violent  hand  upon  her  stomach. 

"Gaw!  "  roared  Ivy  Badger,  leaping  up  with  a  great 
pretence  of  fury,  "  girls,  let  me  get  at  her,  only  let  me 
get  at  her.  You  watch  me  make  her  so  as  her  mother 
wouldn't  know  her." 

Miss  Penn  and  a  big  dark  girl  on  the  other  side  hurled 
themselves  on  Miss  Badger,  who  stamped  and  roared, 


120  BLIND  ALLEY 

mouthing  comic  furious  faces,  and  breathing  threats  of 
the  most  anatomical  kind,  the  least  of  which  was  the 
scattering  of  Pollie  Westfield's  liver  to  the  four  winds. 

A  sudden  scurry,  a  line  of  patient  white  backs  before 
the  moulds.  Miss  Hayes  came  in,  rather  rigid  and 
discontented,  close  followed  by  Tinker,  a  small  girl  who 
called  them  to  the  outside  gangway  for  the  ten  o'clock 
milk. 

"Hooray!"  roared  Miss  Badger  (for  this  particular 
meal  was  recognized  as  an  occasion  for  license) ,  "  here 
we  are  again.  Pledge  me  girls  in  the  famous  Cottenham 
milk,  straight  from  the  pump." 

Even  Miss  Hayes  smiled.  The  girls  crowded  round 
Tinker  and  drank  hurriedly.  This  was  not  a  recognized 
meal,  to  be  taken  only  outside  the  clean  area,  but  still 
they  were  not  supposed  to  waste  time,  and  did  not  drink 
while  at  work,  for  fear  that  T.  N.  T.  dust  should  fall  into 
the  beverage.  While  Miss  Badger  drank  up,  making  as 
much  noise  as  she  could,  in  imitation  as  she  put  it  of  the 
elephant  when  about  to  baa,  Monica  reflected  that  her 
fellow  workers  were  really  a  jolly  crowd.  In  this  big, 
clean  factory  she  felt  happy,  useful;  so  far  as  work  can 
help  a  woman  she  felt  complete.  And  while  she  waited 
for  the  new  lot  of  T.  N.  T.  she  went  off  into  meditations  so 
vague  that  she  could  not  say  what  she  was  thinking 
about. 

Suddenly  a  noise  entered  her  consciousness.  It  was 
not  the  regular  noise  from  the  proof  yard,  where  rapid 
cracks  signalized  that  caps  were  being  tested,  nor  the 
frequent  dull  rumble  from  the  Woolwich  sheds  miles 
away.  It  was  a  sudden,  heavy,  muffled  noise,  close  by,  a 
noise  she  had  never  heard  before.  It  terrified  her  by  its 
unfamiliarity,  and  the  silence  that  followed  was  more 
terrifying.  She  found  herself  staring  at  the  other  girls, 


IN  ENGLAND  121 

whose  eyes  too  had  widened ;  Miss  Hayes  seemed  to  be  lis- 
tening like  a  dog  in  the  wind.  Not  a  word  was  said,  and 
the  tension  grew  abominable.  Monica  found  herself 
holding  on  to  the  edge  of  the  table  with  cold,  twisted 
fingers. 

So,  some  seconds  later,  it  was  almost  a  relief  to  hear  a 
bell  begin  to  ring,  then  another,  and  yet  another,  until  the 
air  was  filled  with  the  ringing  of  bells. 

"The  fire  bell,"  said  Miss  Hayes  quietly.  "Go  to 
your  benches  and  wait  for  orders." 

As  the  girls  obediently  sat  down,  Miss  Hayes  went  to 
the  door,  opened  it,  and  taking  out  the  wedge,  as  directed 
in  Article  1  of  Fire  Regulations,  maintained  it  open  and 
stood  in  the  doorway  so  as  not  to  obstruct  movement  on 
the  gangway. 

Monica,  seated  and  waiting,  tried  to  see  through  the 
window  what  was  happening.  It  was  horrible  that  noth- 
ing should  be  happening.  The  tram  girls  had  left  their 
trolleys  on  the  gangways.  There  was  nothing  to  be  seen, 
except  at  the  door  of  each  shop  the  charge  hand  at  atten- 
tion. It  seemed  to  last  minutes.  And  still  all  the  bells 
were  ringing.  It  struck  Monica  that  there  was  no  emo- 
tion in  bells. 

Suddenly,  as  if  in  receipt  of  a  signal,  all  the  charge 
nands  turned  to  their  shops.  Monica  ceased  to  be  a  spec- 
tator, for  Miss  Hayes  was  marshalling  her  girls  and 
marching  them  through  the  inspection  room  towards  the 
shift  house. 

Marvellously  she  came  in  the  rear:  "Left!  right!  " 
she  cried,  a  pleasant  military  automaton.  Monica  was 
not  afraid  yet.  It  was  very  like  fire  drill.  But,  as  she 
entered  the  inspection  room  in  time  to  see  the  last  Wool- 
wich girl  passing  out,  her  heart  gave  a  leap,  her  knees 
felt  weak.  For,  one  after  the  other,  she  heard  three  sep- 


122  BLIND  ALLEY 

arate  explosions,  and  for  a  moment  the  windows  on  the 
right  were  lit  up  by  a  red  glare. 

"  Steady,"  said  Miss  Hayes,  with  a  lovely  steadiness 
in  her  own  voice. 

But  in  the  change  house  there  was  a  moment  of  con- 
fusion, for  their  group  collided  with  the  tail  of  the  inspec- 
tion column,  as  the  latter  stopped  to  make  way  for  the 
girls  from  the  press  shop.  In  that  moment  of  stoppage 
Monica,  for  the  first  time  in  her  life,  knew  the  feeling  of 
blind  terror.  It  was  rather  dark.  There  were  no  win- 
dows along  the  sides.  She  was  penned  in  with  these 
eighty  girls  and  in  a  horrible  silence.  "  No  panic,"  she 
murmured  to  herself,  and  was  conscious  that  there  were 
a  great  many  of  them  in  the  room  and  that  the  door 
looked  terribly  small. 

Then  they  were  outside,  marching  towards  the  gate, 
along  the  gangway  that  seemed  so  narrow  and  so  long. 
For  a  moment  she  felt  an  impulse  to  break  away,  leap 
the  barrier  into  the  dirty  area,  and  run  across  the  swampy 
ground,  but  she  dug  her  nails  into  her  palms.  Monica 
was  not  romantic:  nothing  within  her  took  up  the  old 
battle  cry  of  her  fathers,  but  a  training  made  up  of  class 
implications  compelled  her  to  keep  down  her  impulse 
just  because  it  was  an  impulse. 

Then  she  felt  her  nails  go  deeper  into  her  skin,  for  not 
a  hundred  yards  away  a  sheet  of  flame  rose  on  the  other 
side  of  "  B  "  Division,  and  to  the  accompaniment  of 
a  roaring  noise  that  terrified  her  she  saw  things  in 
the  air,  things  that  flamed  and  smoked,  that  fell  on 
the  roofs  of  "  B  "  Division,  and,  worst  of  all,  large  dark 
things  which,  she  dully  realised,  seemed  to  be  writhing 
in  the  air  ... 

And  still  they  were  marching  along  those  endless  gang- 
ways .  .  .  She  saw  smoke  rise  in  grey  streams  from  the 


IN  ENGLAND  123 

roofs  of  "  B  "  .  .  .  Hot  ashes  and  little  burning  frag- 
ments of  wood  fell  over  the  procession  .  .  .  She  was 
conscious  of  Ivy  Badger  behind  her  laughing  .  .  . 

Just  as  they  passed  the  "  B  "  gangway  the  whole  shop 
went  up.  It  seemed  to  happen  progressively:  the  walls 
caved  outwards,  making  strange,  broken  shapes  with  their 
purple  and  green  camouflage  lit  up  by  flames.  She  saw 
the  gangway  crumble  and  fall  smoking  into  the  swamp, 
and  with  a  sudden  sickness  had  a  vision  of  a  string  of 
girls,  passing  out  of  "  B  ",  at  first  lit  up,  then  falling 
singly,  or  crumpled  in  smoking  groups  with  the  caving 
walls.  She  heard  screams,  and  as  the  roofs  fell  in,  a  more 
shocking  silence. 

It  was  then  she  saw  the  men  behind  "  B  "  Division,  the 
fire  engines  already  at  work  —  she  was  conscious  of  two 
toy  engines  racing  towards  the  factory  along  the  Borstal 
Road.  The  unit  foreman,  followed  by  two  other  men, 
running  with  incredible  rapidity  along  the  "  A  "  gang- 
way, which  was  still  safe.  But  a  panic  seemed  to  have 
gained  her  neighbours;  somebody  was  shoving  her;  she 
struck  out  savagely,  and  it  delighted  her  to  feel  her  elbow 
enter  the  softness  of  a  body !  A  cry  rose  up,  "  Let's  get 
out."  She  had  a  glimpse  of  the  girls,  breaking  away, 
leaping  into  the  swamp,  running.  She  too  was  running, 
towards  "  A  "  Division,  she  did  not  know  why,  one  of 
hundreds  of  little  figures  now  beyond  the  hold  of  dis- 
cipline. Some  men  were  on  "  A  "  gangway  still,  signing 
to  the  girls  to  turn  back.  But  Monica  found  her  brain 
without  ideas ;  she  did  not  know  where  she  was  running  to, 
but  she  could  not  stop.  And  the  repeated  explosions  that 
came  now  one  after  the  other  deprived  her  of  all  power 
to  think.  She  heard  a  loud  hiss  from  the  river  as  the  fire 
barge  came  up  and  began  to  spout  water  at  "  A  "  Division 
in  the  hope  of  protecting  it  against  falling  embers.  But 


124  BLIND  ALLEY 

as  for  a  moment  she  stood  alone,  she  saw  a  long  trail  of 
red-hot  ashes  fall  on  the  last  shed.  She  did  not  think, 
gave  herself  no  commands.  She  found  herself  leaping  the 
barrier,  rushing  into  the  deserted  shed,  tugging  at  the 
extinguisher  that  was  too  heavy  for  her.  She  dragged, 
and  she  strained.  As  she  hauled  it  to  the  door  she  was 
single  of  purpose.  All  she  thought  was:  "  If  I  can  get  it 
out,  we  may  just  do  it."  Then  somebody  seized  her  by 
the  waist. 

"  Get  out,  get  out  at  once,"  said  a  voice,  "  give  it  to 
me,  don't  be  a  fool."  And  strong  hands  dragged  her  out 
of  the  shed  with  a  certain  brutality.  She  felt  herself 
thrown  out  by  a  violent  thrust  between  the  shoulder 
blades,  but  she  was  more  conscious  of  the  thump-thump 
of  the  extinguisher  as  the  man  dragged  it  across  the  floor. 
Hardly  conscious,  she  was  outside,  held  up  by  a  man  who 
had  his  arm  round  her  waist. 

"  The  extinguisher,"  she  murmured  feebly. 

"  It's  all  right,"  said  a  voice  roughly,  but  it  was  a  kind 
voice. 

She  listened  to  the  extinguisher  hissing.  She  found 
herself  crying  a  little.  She  was  too  weak  to  shrink  when, 
with  a  dominating  roar,  the  cordite  magazine  went  up. 
She  was  thankful  for  the  anonymous  arm  which  still  held 
her  up.  .  .  . 

Towards  the  afternoon  Frank  Cottenham  stood  medi- 
tatively in  the  swamp.  Half  the  factory  still  smoked 
gently;  the  firemen  were  negligently  playing  on  the  blue 
volutes  of  smoke  that  rose  straight  in  the  warm  air. 
Superficially,  he  was  most  unhappy.  Two  hundred  yards 
away  the  St.  John's  Ambulance  people  were  still  passing 
with  stretchers  on  which  lay  horribly  blackened,  shape- 
less things. 

"  My  God!  "  he  said,  "  are  there  any  more?  " 


IN  ENGLAND  125 

With  staring  eyes  he  watched  the  procession. 

"  Eighty-three,  eighty-four,  eighty-five.  That's  the  lot, 
I  suppose.  No,  good  Lord!  here  are  some  more!  "  He 
turned  away  so  as  not  to  see  what  it  was  the  labourers 
were  dragging  out  from  the  fallen  gangway  of  "  B  " 
Division,  but  suddenly  his  agony  was  overwhelmed  by  a 
feeling  of  preoccupation  and  delight,  a  feeling  which  had 
been  calling  to  him  through  those  three  hours  of  terrible 
activity.  He  could  still  feel  her  suppleness  in  the  hollow 
of  his  arm.  He  wished  that  her  tears  still  lay  wet  upon 
his  hand.  Dishonestly,  he  said  to  himself: 

"  She's  a  brick.  I  really  ought  to  go  and  see  how  she's 
doing." 

He  hurried  towards  "  F  "  building,  converted  into  a 
temporary  hospital,  turning  away  from  the  endless  row 
of  objects  upon  the  stretchers;  many  moved  uneasily, 
some  were  moaning.  Cottenham  would  not  have  minded 
so  much  on  a  battle-field,  but  these  were  girls,  and  this 
outraged  his  deepest  affection.  Still,  he  had  to  look  if  he 
was  to  find  her,  and  it  did  not  strike  him  that  this  was 
poetic  justice,  that  his  search  for  the  woman  he  desired 
compelled  him  to  look  into  the  tortured  faces  of  all  those 
other  women. 

He  found  her  at  last,  unhurt,  sitting  limply  in  an  arm- 
chair in  the  sick  room.  How  white  she  looked !  and  how 
exquisite !  She  had  taken  off  her  cap,  and  so  for  the  first 
time  he  saw  the  red-brown  hair.  She  looked  at  him  as 
if  she  did  not  know  him,  and  this  surprised  him.  It 
seemed  incredible  that  he  should  not  be  as  familiar  to 
her  thoughts  as  she  had  been  to  his.  So  he  felt  embar- 
rassed, a  feeling  unusual  in  him  when  in  the  presence  of 
a  woman.  He  faltered: 

"  I  say  —  I  just  wanted  to  know  how  you  are." 

"  I'm  all  right,  thanks,"  said  Monica. 


126  BLIND  ALLEY 

He  paused.  Somehow  he  had  not  expected  her  voice  to 
be  pitched  like  that. 

"  I  mean  —  well,  you  did  a  very  brave  thing,  a  silly 
thing,  but  then  I  suppose  all  those  things  are  either  brave 
or  silly.  They're  silly  if  they  don't  come  off." 

Monica  looked  at  him  without  replying.  She  knew 
him  by  sight,  and  was  interested  by  his  good  looks,  his 
well-groomed  alertness. 

"Oh,  well,"  she  said,  "  it  isn't  worth  making  a  fuss 
about.  To  tell  you  the  truth  I  don't  know  what  I  did." 

Cottenham  looked  at  her  with  growing  surprise. 

("  Hang  it  all!  the  girl  talked  like  a  lady.  Well,  time 
would  show.  And  her  hands !  extremely  dirty,  but  not  a 
working-girl's  hands.") 

"  Do  you  mind  telling  me  your  name?  "  he  said,  and  as 
if  to  prevent  misunderstanding:  "  I  have  to  know  your 
name,  you  see,  because  we  have  to  report  every  detail." 

"  Monica  Oakley." 

"  Oh!  Miss  Monica  Oakley."  He  made  a  note  of  it. 
"Well,  Miss  Oakley,  I  think  you'll  hear  a  little  more 
about  this.  I  don't  think  I  ought  to  say  any  more,  as  no 
doubt  you're  very  shaken  and  would  like  to  go  home,  but 
I  think  I  may  say  that  the  factory  will  feel  —  that  it 
ought  to  recognise  your,  may  I  say,  your  intelligence  and 
courage." 

Monica  made  a  gesture  of  deprecation.  It  struck  him 
as  full  of  grace. 

"  I  think  we  shall  probably  ask  you  to  take  charge  of 
a  shop,  when  we  start  again  on  what  is  left  of  our  poor 
old  factory,  but  I  won't  worry  you  now.  Of  course,  it 
will  be  a  few  days  before  work  begins  again.  Well,  —  " 
he  felt  awkward,  "  well,  good  morning,  Miss  Oakley." 

Monica,  very  tired,  watched  him  walk  away.  She  was 
not  now  unhappy  or  terrified;  she  was  not  conscious  of 


IN  ENGLAND  127 

the  all-surrounding  pain  and  death.  She  found  her  idle 
mind  occupied  by  a  new  interest.  He  had  a  pleasant 
voice,  she  thought,  and  somehow  he  was  both  shy  and 
brave.  His  blue  eyes  sometimes  had  stared  hers  down, 
and  sometimes  eluded  her.  It  made  her  wonder  whether 
he  was  usually  shy,  and  bold  with  her,  or  usually  bold, 
but  shy  with  her.  It  was  an  irritating  speculation.  She 
felt  too  worn  to  get  up  and  go  away.  She  wanted  to  sleep 
as  she  sat,  but  this  new  idea  would  not  let  her  alone.  She 
tried  to  drive  it  away  as  she  grew  sleepier,  but  still  the 
problem  of  Cottenham  imposed  itself.  "  It's  like  trying 
to  go  to  sleep  when  you've  got  indigestion,"  she  thought. 
But,  little  by  little,  as  the  needs  of  her  body  asserted 
themselves,  she  went  to  sleep,  her  waking  brain  shep- 
herded to  the  last  by  this  idea,  which,  as  she  grew  drowsy, 
became  less  insistent,  became  vague  as  a  distant  song. 

XXI 

THE  feeling  of  distracting  companionship  which  had 
been  his  for  the  last  few  days  grew  less  insistent  as  Cot- 
tenham, leaving  the  car  at  the  garage,  walked  round  his 
house  towards  the  front  door.  In  the  warm  May  even- 
ing, framed  in  a  sky  pale  as  running  water,  his  house 
filled  him  with  a  sense  of  harmony  that  made  him  love 
it  so.  It  was  not  a  very  large  house :  it  stood  on  a  slight 
rise,  three  miles  up  the  Medway  from  the  Cottenham 
works,  low,  square,  one  of  those  solemn  Georgian  houses 
with  the  flat,  friendly  facade  of  red  brick,  the  white- 
framed  windows,  the  flat  roof.  Not  very  old,  built  about 
1770  by  some  local  gentleman,  it  had  come  into  the  hands 
of  the  Cottenhams  in  the  early  'sixties  when  the  works 
were  formecj.  But  though  it  was  only  his  grandfather's 
house,  Frank  Cottenham  felt  naturalised  to  it,  to  the 


128  BLIND  ALLEY 

thick  hedges  of  clipped  box  and  golden  privet,  the  flagged 
paths  grown  with  rock  plants,  the  old  gnarled  vine,  and 
the  still  older  lavender  bush  that  sprang  from  stems 
thick  as  a  man's  wrist. 

As  he  closed  the  door  behind  him,  he  was  received  by 
those  sounds  which  to  him  meant  home.  On  his  right, 
in  the  drawing-room,  Julia  was  playing.  He  knew  the 
piece  well,  the  Toccata  of  Paradies.  He  loved  the  Toc- 
cata, its  gay  disregard  of  life's  responsibility.  He  lis- 
tened for  a  long  time,  hat  in  hand : 

"  Some  men  married,  married  for  gold 
And  some  for  their  heart's  desire. 
Some  left  their  hearts  to  wither  and  wilt, 
And  many  had  nothing  to  give  ..." 

cried  the  Toccata.  "  Ah !  Toccata  of  my  dreams," 
thought  Cottenham,  "  how  you  understand  life !  "  Fas- 
cinated, he  waited  for  the  recurrent  motif  which  sums  up 
the  immortal  little  melody : 

"  But  I  didn't  care,  I  didn't  care, 
For  languid  and  light  was  I ! 
And  I  didn't  care,  and  I  didn't  care  ..." 

He  sighed.  Oh !  sunny  Toccata !  Was  it  really  like  that 
in  seventeenth- century  Italy? 

Julia  stopped,  but  almost  at  once  began  to  play  another 
familiar  tune,  a  Pavane  of  Locatelli.  Forcing  himself  a 
little,  for  he  wanted  to  see  his  children,  Cottenham  went 
upstairs,  followed  all  the  way  by  the  mock  solemnity  of 
the  Pavane  that  prisons  the  gossamer,  cabins  the  cloud. 
For  a  moment  he  stopped  in  the  night-nursery,  where 
Rupert,  his  mouth  wide  open,  lay  asleep.  He  was  a  large, 
fine  baby,  dark  like  his  mother,  but  it  pleased  Cottenham 
to  think  that  under  the  veined  eyelids  lay  eyes  blue  as  his 


IN  ENGLAND  129 

own.  Then  Rupert  stirred  in  his  sleep,  and  with  appar- 
ently enormous  effort  disengaged  an  arm  and  a  fat  brown 
fist  which  he  waved  with  beautiful  helplessness.  Cotten- 
ham  bent  down  to  kiss  the  soft  warm  cheek  that  was  vel- 
vety and  sweet-scented.  Adorable,  fat  Rupert. 

Then,  treading  carefully,  he  went  into  the  day-nursery, 
where  Nurse,  tight-featured  and  businesslike,  and  in- 
clined to  bully  the  under-nurse,  was  preparing  Diana  and 
Lucretia  for  bed.  Their  father  came  in  just  in  time  to 
still  a  disturbance,  for  on  this  brilliant  evening  both  little 
girls  looked  upon  bed  as  an  outrage;  Lucretia,  aged  five, 
was  lying  on  her  back,  kicking,  bellowing  that  she  would 
never  get  up  again,  while  Diana's  features  were  resolving 
themselves  into  a  system  of  corkscrews  which  promised 
tears.  But,  at  the  sight  of  Cottenham,  the  two  children 
gave  a  shrill  cry  of  delight,  ran,  seized  him.  Diana,  who 
was  heavy  for  her  six  years,  nearly  pulled  him  over  by 
suddenly  clutching  the  slack  of  his  coat  and  declaring 
that  he  was  a  swing. 

"Now,  Miss  Diana,"  said  Nurse  ferociously,  "  no 
swings  to-night.  Come  here  at  once." 

"  Let  me  have  them  for  a  moment,  Nurse,"  said  Cot- 
tenham humbly. 

"  Very  well,  Sir,"  said  the  expert,  obviously  indignant. 
"  I  think  ten  minutes  will  be  quite  enough,  Sir."  And 
motioning  her  subordinate  away,  she  left  the  room,  while 
Cottenham  sat  down  and  his  two  little  daughters  jumped 
one  on  to  each  knee,  trying  to  come  down  on  him  as  heav- 
ily as  they  could,  for  that  was  part  of  the  game.  In  that 
moment  he  knew  complete  delight.  The  two  little  bodies 
clasped  in  his  arms  were  so  active.  Their  hearts,  he 
thought,  beat  quicker  than  other  people's. 

"  Well,  darlings,"  he  murmured  between  the  two  dark 
heads,  "  what  shall  we  do?  " 


130  BLIND  ALLEY 

"  A  story,"  said  Diana  breathlessly. 

"  The  story  about  the  night  when  the  china  cat  walked," 
said  Lucretia. 

"  No,"  said  Diana,  "  I  know  that  story.  I  want  the 
story  about  the  fairy  that  says  ping-pang  in  the  tele- 
phone." 

"  The  story  about  the  china  cat,"  said  Lucretia  indig- 
nantly. 

"  Hush,"  said  Cottenham,  "  or  Nurse'll  come  back. 
I'll  tell  you  a  new  story.  A  story  you  have  never  heard 
before." 

The  two  little  girls  opened  enormous,  dark,  fascinated 
eyes.  A  new  story! 

"  Once  upon  a  time  there  was  a  man  who  had  a  brain 
of  gold.  When  he  was  a  little  boy  he  had  a  very  large 
head,  because  there  was  such  a  lot  of  gold  in  it.  It  was 
a  nuisance,  rather,  because  his  head  was  heavy,  and 
sometimes  when  he  ran  he  used  to  fall  down  and  hurt 
himself." 

"  Did  he  fall  when  he  went  downstairs?  "  asked  Lu- 
cretia. 

"  Very  likely." 

"  Did  he  fall  on  his  nose?  "  asked  Diana. 

"  Yes,  he  was  always  falling  about,  but  don't  interrupt. 
Now,  one  day,  when  he  had  fallen  down,  as  he  picked 
himself  up,  he  saw  that  he  had  cut  his  head  a  little.  — 
Oh, -he  hadn't  hurt  himself  much,"  cried  Cottenham  as 
he  saw  a  tremor  of  sympathy  pass  over  Diana's  face, 
"  only  a  very,  very  little.  And  when  he  got  up  he  saw 
that  there  had  fallen  from  his  head  two  or  three  little 
scraps  of  gold.  So  he  picked  them  up  and  took  them 
to  his  master.  And  his  master  said  to  him:  'Algernon, 
I  am  very  pleased  with  you  for  giving  me  these.  I  am 
so  pleased  that  you  shan't  do  any  sums  to-day.  .  .  .  '  " 


IN  ENGLAND  131 

The  two  little  girls  clung  and  stared,  as  Cottenham 
went  to  the  end  of  the  old  French  story.  They  did  not 
quite  understand  the  end,  when  the  man  with  the  golden 
brain  has  spent  nearly  all  of  it  on  friendship  and  love, 
and  holds  out  in  a  blood-stained  hand  the  last  scraps  of' 
that  golden  brain  to  the  woman  who  was  faithless  to 
him.  But  they  were  quiet  when  Nurse  came  back,  and 
kissed  their  father  with  soft  little  cool  lips.  He  went 
away  thinking,  without  connecting  the  thought  with  any- 
thing else: 

"  This  is  the  best  thing  in  the  world.  It  is  not  a  thing 
to  risk."  Then  he  added:  "You  damned  sentimental- 
ist," and  went  to  his  dressing  room. 

The  impression  that  this  was  the  best  thing  in  the 
world  clung  to  him  throughout  the  evening.  How  lovely 
Julia  was!  and  how  strange  that  after  seven  years  of 
marriage  he  should  still  discern  her  loveliness.  She  was 
tall,  almost  too  slim :  something  of  the  Italian  greyhound 
about  her  narrow  arms,  delicate  ankles  and  wrists.  That 
night  she  was  wearing  a  new  frock,  always  a  sure  pass- 
port to  his  approval.  And  a  beautiful  frock.  Over  her 
shoulders,  though  widely  cut  away  round  the  neck,  hung 
a  masculine,  but  armless  coat  of  black  velvet,  edged  all 
round  with  an  embroidered  pattern  of  golden  bees.  The 
thin  body  was  clad  in  a  corselet  of  heavy  brocade,  striped 
black  and  gold,  and  caught  up  towards  the  breast.  The 
skirt  also  of  striped  brocade  broke  on  her  narrow  knees. 
Upon  her  breast  lay  a  cabochon  ruby.  Yes,  she  was 
very  lovely.  He  felt  it  right  to  congratulate  her ;  admira- 
tion is  a  duty. 

"  Do  you  really  like  it?  "  asked  Julia,  a  little  anxiously, 
for  she  respected  her  husband's  taste,  which  was  excel- 
lent. 

"  Yes,  you  don't  always  bring  it  off,  but  this  is  It." 


132  BLIND  ALLEY 

"  I  hesitated  about  that  brocade.  Don't  you  think  it's 
rather  heavy?  " 

"No.    What  did  you  think  of?    Crepe  georgette?" 

"  Some  sort  of  crepe." 

"  It's  quite  as  well  you  let  it  alone.  Crepe 's  so  flimsy," 
said  Cottenham.  "  Besides,  when  you  go  in  for  those 
light  stuffs,  chiffon,  say,  as  nowadays  you've  got  to  use 
the  same  material  all  the  way  down,  you  get  the  line 
too  long.  You  want  a  broader  effect." 

They  discussed  the  frock  for  some  time,  then  passed 
on  to  a  projected  coat  and  skirt.  They  even  had  a 
difference  of  opinion,  for  Mrs.  Cottenham  had  determined 
on  gabardine,  while  her  husband  wanted  to  experiment 
with  something  rough  like  hopsack.  They  were  united, 
those  two,  by  many  interests,  of  which  clothes  and  music 
were  perhaps  the  strongest.  After  dinner  Julia  played 
again,  but  the  old  unsteadiness  recaptured  her  husband, 
and  after  a  while  he  went  into  his  study.  For  a  long 
time  he  remained  with  his  chin  in  his  hand.  Then  his 
thought  found  expression: 

"  How  beautiful  she  is !  What  a  savage,  in  a  way. 
How  lucky  for  her  that  she's  dark.  If  she'd  been  pink 
and  white  she'd  have  tried  to  express  that  wild  soul  of 
hers,  and  colours  would  have  made  her  absurd."  He 
brooded  for  a  moment  over  the  temperament  of  his  wife, 
still  foreign,  because  it  was  so  fitful,  so  jealous,  so  pas- 
sionate, in  every  way  animal,  and  so  strangely  attractive 
to  him,  who  was  rather  fadedly  gay,  cynical  in  presence 
of  his  own  emotions,  kindly,  negligent,  sentimental,  and 
sensual  in  the  mind  rather  than  the  body.  His  thoughts 
took  another  turn: 

"  I'd  better  let  that  girl  alone.  Yes,  but  can  I  let  her 
alone?  I  think  I'll  get  her  sacked.  It's  about  the  only 
way."  Then  his  subtle  familiar  murmured:  "  Nonsense! 


IN  ENGLAND  133 

Why  sack  her?  It  isn't  fair.  The  girl's  done  you  no 
harm.  Besides,  it'll  be  all  right.  In  the  ordinary  way 
you  never  go  near  the  shops.  The  chances  are  you'll 
never  see  her  again;  so  don't  worry." 

But  the  next  day,  and  this  filled  him  with  a  sort  of 
shame,  he  found  himself,  as  if  by  chance,  in  the  car 
pulled  up  near  the  canteen,  improvised  in  the  Admiralty 
building.  He  wanted  to  see  her,  and  he  knew  it.  But 
as  the  girls  came  out  he  started  the  car.  He  was  afraid 
to  see  her.  All  that  day  he  tried  to  anaesthetise  himself 
with  work,  of  which  there  was  abundance,  for  three  out 
of  the  seven  divisions  of  the  factory  were  burnt  down 
to  the  piles,  and  there  was  enough  struggling  with  con- 
tractors, barge  and  railway  companies,  let  alone  an 
impending  lawsuit  against  the  insurance  company,  to 
drive  out  of  his  mind  the  thought  of  any  woman.  But, 
all  through,  that  thought  clung  to  him.  "  It's  like  a 
fishhook,"  he  said  to  himself.  "  Damn  her." 

At  six  o'clock  came  news.  Something  had  happened 
near  Jutland;  judging  from  the  Admiralty  statement  the 
fleet  had  got  rather  the  worst  of  it.  For  a  moment  the 
idea  that  the  British  fleet  had  been  beaten  drove  every- 
thing else  from  his  mind.  It  was  only  a  few  minutes 
later  that  he  realised  with  horror  that  even  such  an  event 
could  not  entirely  annul  the  other  preoccupation. 

Much  later  that  evening,  at  half-past  ten,  he  told 
Irvine  that  he  could  work  no  more.  As  he  walked 
through  the  silent  building  he  passed  through  the  staff 
office.  On  a  shelf  stood  two  heavy  registers  marked 
"  Staff."  He  hesitated  for  a  moment,  then,  looking  back 
to  see  if  Irvine  had  followed  him,  he  hurriedly  took  down 
the  volume  marked  "  N-Z."  Hurriedly  he  opened  it. 
Ah!  here  it  was.  Only  one  Oakley,  luckily.  Then  he 
stared  — 182,  Castle  Hill.  Castle  Hill?  Rochester? 


134  BLIND  ALLEY 

This  was  incredible.  He  knew  the  street  well,  the  street 
of  fine  houses  that  ran  down  alongside  the  Castle  towards 
the  bridge.  No,  really,  munition  girls  earning  thirty- 
four  bob  a  week  didn't  live  in  Castle  Hill.  "  After  all," 
he  said  to  himself  savagely,  "  what  the  devil  do  I  care 
where  she  lives?  " 

But  he  did  not  turn  the  car  towards  the  south.  In  a 
few  minutes  he  passed  Fort  Clarence  and  turned  into 
the  broad  street.  He  left  the  car  and  walked  up.  In 
the  black  darkness  of  the  military  area  he  could  not  be 
quite  sure  of  Number  182,  but  it  must  be  one  of  those  two 
substantial  houses.  Of  course  no  lights  could  be  seen. 
Yet  one  of  those  was  her  window. 

Cottenham  stood  for  a  long  time.  His  hands  clasped 
behind  him,  he  thought: 

"  Sentimental  fool.  Cub.  You're  thirty-nine,  and  you 
go  and  stare  at  a  girl's  window  just  as  you  used  to  go 
round  in  the  evening  and  stare  at  the  light  on  the  top 
floor  of  the  pastry-cook's  in  the  Corn.  But  it  can't  be 
helped.  Frank,  old  boy,  you're  going  to  get  into  trouble. 
She  won't  have  anything  to  do  with  you,  and  if  she  does 
it'll  be  still  worse.  She's  not  just  one  of  the  hands. 
She  won't  take  it  easy.  She's  pukka.  If  she  listens  to 
you  at  all  she'll  take  it  hard.  The  real  thing,  you  know, 
a  clean  bolt.  And  you  won't  be  able  to  meet  her,  and 
if  you  do  meet  her  you'll  get  caught.  And  Julia  will 
suspect.  And  there'll  be  a  devil  of  a  row.  And  you'll 
get  sick  of  her  just  about  the  time  when  she  gets  fond  of 
you.  And  you'll  jolly  well  wish  you'd  let  her  alone  — 
but,  my  poor  old  Frank,  I'm  afraid  you  won't." 


IN   ENGLAND  135 

XXII 

"  IRVINE,"  said  Cottenham,  "  this  afternoon  at  three 
o'clock  I  want  to  see  the  charge  hands." 

"  Oh,"  said  the  Manager,  "  what's  wrong?  " 

"  Nothing.  But  the  way  things  are  going  we  shall 
never  get  properly  started  again  unless  we  can  get  more 
labour.  The  Labour  Exchange  is  not  sending  anybody, 
is  it?  " 

"  Well,  we  had  five  girls  in  this  morning.  Of  course 
they're  a  bit  scared,  but  they'll  settle  down." 

"  That's  all  very  well,"  said  Cottenham,  "  but  how  long 
are  they  going  to  take  to  settle  down?  You're  no  psy- 
chologist, Irvine ;  when  a  factory's  had  seventy-two  killed 
and  two  hundred  and  ten  wounded  a  fortnight  before, 
well!  girls  don't  mob  the  place  for  a  job  when  they  can 
go  across  the  river  and  make  uniforms  and  lead  a  quiet 
life.  Since  we  went  up  the  girls  have  been  shy  every- 
where. It's  the  same  story  at  Curtis's  and  Harvey's,  and 
at  Woolwich  too.  Otherwise  we're  all  right.  I  see  that 
Humphreys  are  running  up  the  shanties  in  double  quick 
time,  and  we  seem  to  have  got  the  right  priority.  We 
shall  have  a  unit  up  in  a  week,  do  you  think?  " 

"  Yes.  I  should  think  about  a  week.  We  ought  to  be 
more  or  less  0.  K.  in  about  five  weeks." 

"  Except  as  to  labour.  That's  why  I'm  going  to  have 
the  charge  hands  in,  and  I'm  going  to  orate.  Tickle  up 
their  patriotism,  you  know.  Show  'em  how  stuck-up 
they  ought  to  be  because  they  haven't  been  killed.  All 
the  usual  talk  about  the  fellows  out  there  risking  every 
day  what  they  ought  to  be  proud  to  risk.  I  want  to  turn 
them  into  recruiting  sergeants.  If  every  charge  hand 
brings  us  three  girls,  we  shall  start  up  that  unit  next 
week,  and  then  things  will  move." 


136  BLIND  ALLEY 

The  meeting  took  place  at  three  o'clock,  in  the  Club, 
a  large  building  near  the  Chalk  Pit.  The  forty  girls 
came  in,  rather  self-conscious  and  solemn,  pleased  be- 
cause this  was  a  sort  of  reception,  and  of  course  they 
were  wearing  their  outdoor  clothes.  There  was  a  good 
deal  of  quiet  giggling,  and  Cottenham  felt  very  much 
looked  at.  A  shrill  whisper  reached  him:  "I  think  he's 
just  sweet."  How  adorable  women  were!  But  as  they 
settled  down  he  felt  uneasy  and  discontented  until  at 
last  he  met  two  deep  grey  eyes.  He  needed  all  his 
experienced  wisdom  not  to  give  her  a  little  smile 
of  recognition.  It  was  a  brief  address.  Cottenham 
sketched  out  the  history  of  the  Works,  pointing  out  that 
most  of  them  were  new  hands,  but  still  they  had  entered 
an  organisation  which  had  always  maintained  model  rela- 
tions with  its  employees,  that  the  management  were 
associated  with  the  workers  in  half  a  dozen  ways,  sick 
clubs,  holiday  clubs,  sports  and  games,  and  doubtless  as 
time  went  on  the  association  might  become  still  more 
democratic.  Briefly,  it  was  a  question  of  holding  to- 
gether. A  calamity  had  occurred;  such  things  were 
inevitable  in  explosive  works.  Everything  was  done  to 
avoid  them,  and  no  doubt  his  audience  knew  that  acci- 
dents were  very  rare.  Still,  it  had  happened,  and  the 
only  thing  to  do  was  for  everybody  to  do  their  best  to 
pull  the  business  together. 

"  And  that,"  he  said,  "  we  cannot  do  without  more 
labour.  Just  now  we  are  four  hundred  and  ten  girls 
short.  A  number,  as  you  know,  perished  in  the  explo- 
sion, but  the  great  majority  of  the  missing  are  girls  who 
are  frightened  and  haven't  come  back.  Oh,  I  quite 
understand  it;  it's  enough  to  frighten  anybody.  But 
still  I  think  we  must  remember  that  we  in  England  are 
in  a  comparatively  happy  state.  The  enemy  is  kept 


IN  ENGLAND  137 

from  you  by  millions  of  men  who  are  every  day,  and 
all  day,  risking  death  from  those  explosives  which  you 
make.  They  take  their  risk.  Can  we  not  take  a  much 
smaller  risk?  " 

He  met  Monica's  eyes,  and  took  a  more  lyrical  turn: 
"  The  essence  of  human  life,  the  thing  that  makes  it 
adventurous  and  lovely,  is  just  that  triumph  of  our  spirit 
over  our  natural  craven  nature.  We  are  afraid  of  pain 
and  privation;  we  develop  only  when  with  open  eyes  we 
decide  to  face  that  pain  and  that  privation.  Life  cannot 
crown  a  human  being  until  that  being  risks  his  throne." 
He  felt  that  he  was  soaring  too  high.  "  So  what  I  want 
is  your  help.  I  know  you  agree  with  me,  or  you  would 
not  be  here,  you  would  not  have  come  back ;  I  want  every 
one  of  you  to  speak  to-night  to  her  friend,  to  her  friend's 
friend,  to  bring  them  back  to  the  work  that  is  necessary 
if  the  country  is  to  supply  the  armies  that  will  make  its 
cause  prevail.  I  want  you  to  bring  in  labour.  To  feel 
that  you  are  all  of  you  true  soldiers  and  to  do  a  bigger 
bit  than  ever  now  you  have  to  win  the  battle  of  England." 

There  was  a  little  cheering,  and  Cottenham  searched 
his  mind  for  a  phrase  with  which  to  finish  his  speech. 
He  found  Monica's  eyes  serious  and  intent  upon  him. 
It  was  as  if  they  drove  him  into  a  metaphysical  region, 
for  he  said  in  a  low,  reflective  voice:  "  When  I  say  that 
I  want  labour  to  come  into  this  factory,  and  cooperate 
with  me  to  make  it  once  more  into  an  instrument  of 
victory,  I  really  mean  cooperate.  We  live  in  times  where 
the  social  order  is  changing,  where  labour  is  demanding 
its  rightful  share,  not  only  of  the  goods  of  this  world  but 
of  the  control  of  industry.  I  am  not  one  of  those  em- 
ployers who  will  stand  up  against  that;  in  the  first  place 
I  am  not  going  to  stand  in  the  way  of  the  natural  evolu- 
tion of  things,  which  is  producing  an  educated  worker, 


138  BLIND  ALLEY 

and  is  therefore  making  for  a  time  when  the  educated 
worker  will  share  the  control  of  the  works.  Indeed,  dur- 
ing our  lifetime,  we  may  see  a  social  order  where,  in  a 
sense,  there  will  be  no  employers  and  no  employees, 
where  the  control  of  all  industry  will  be  in  the  hands  of 
those  who  work  at  it,  where  they  will  form  a  community 
working  in  each  other's  interest,  because  the  interest  of 
each  one  is  the  interest  of  all,  where  also  each  industry 
will  be  working  for  the  State  which  assists  it,  because  the 
interest  of  each  industry  is  the  same  as  the  interest  of 
the  State.  How  the  change  will  come  I  do  not  know. 
Syndicalists,  Guild  Socialists,  tell  you  that  it  will  come 
by  violence,  and  that  may  be ;  I  think  rather  that  it  will 
come  from  a  clearer  realisation  that  the  chief  right  of 
every  man  and  woman  is  the  right  to  their  share  in  the 
common  responsibility."  He  stopped.  Then,  looking 
only  into  Monica's  eyes  he  said:  "Dreams  perhaps.  It 
may  be  that  what  I  see  there  is  only  dreams,  but  I  can- 
not help  thinking  that  dreams  are  the  stuff  that  worlds 
are  made  of." 

As  that  evening  Monica  sat  sewing,  she  cast  a  balance 
sheet  of  her  present  life.  She  sewed  badly,  but  she  liked 
the  half-automatic  exercise  of  thread  and  needle;  she 
made  blouses  mainly,  but  never  wore  them,  for  they  were 
always  a  failure,  and  so  from  time  to  time  Lady  Oakley 
distributed  them  to  the  genteel  poor  of  Rye.  It  was 
characteristic  of  Monica  that  she  did  few  things  well 
with  her  hands.  Early  attempts  at  polite  education  had 
failed  to  teach  her  to  draw,  and  she  never  ventured  to 
play  the  piano  in  public,  perhaps  owing  to  that  lack  of 
manual  dexterity,  perhaps  because  there  was  no  music 
in  a  temperament  intellectual  and  humorous  rather  than 
emotional.  At  least  it  was  not  emotional  yet.  Monica 
was  a  garden  enclosed,  and  perhaps  because  that  night 


IN  ENGLAND  139 

something  in  her  of  which  she  had  been  conscious  strug- 
gled for  expression,  she  considered  more  closely  her  cir- 
cumstances and  herself.  She  was  not  unhappy,  she 
reflected,  in  this  house.  The  long  hours  at  the  factory, 
the  new  consciousness  of  identity  with  the  common  effort, 
which  to  her  was  warming  like  companionship,  left  her 
every  night  rather  tired.  She  was  not  weak  in  constitu- 
tion, though  her  pallor  led  many  to  think  so,  but  when 
eight  o'clock  came,  when  she  had  washed,  changed, 
quietly  dined  in  her  sitting  room,  reading  a  book  all  the 
while,  she  was  willing  enough  to  go  to  bed.  Books,  the 
introspective  exercise  of  sewing,  occasional  visits  to  the 
Saltaires,  her  only  friends  at  Rochester,  hurried  week- 
ends at  Knapenden,  complicated  by  a  change  at  Maid- 
stone  and  another  at  Ashford,  filled  her  small  leisure  well 
enough. 

She  looked  about  her.  These  were  not  unpleasant 
rooms.  They  were  large,  for  this  was  a  Victorian  house 
converted  into  lodgings.  It  belonged  to  a  wharfinger's 
manager  at  Chatham,  who  had  enlisted  when  the  war 
broke  out,  the  firm  promising  to  pay  his  salary  to  his 
wife.  As  the  wharfingers  then  promptly  went  bankrupt, 
she  found  that  she  could  not  pay  her  rent,  and  giving 
up  gentility,  settled  down  in  the  basement.  The  ground 
floor  was  inhabited  by  two  elderly  spinsters,  one  of  them 
lame,  who  went  out  but  little  and  pursued  unknown  occu- 
pations, the  most  audible  of  which  was  the  recurrent 
sound  of  a  singing  kettle  and  clattering  china;  above 
their  heads  lived  Monica,  respected  owner  of  the  draw- 
ing-room floor;  above,  where  the  rooms  were  smaller, 
lived  the  head  clerk  of  a  factory  at  Stroud,  with  his  wife 
and  little  girl.  It  was  a  quiet  house.  Monica's  rooms 
were  fairly  newly  papered,  not  overloaded  with  orna- 
ments; in  these  two  months  they  had  been  made  more 


140  BLIND  ALLEY 

her  own  by  the  erection  of  book  shelves,  and  the  loan  of 
a  Morland,  to  remind  her  of  Knapenden,  said  Sir  Hugh. 

And  so  she  sat  sewing,  sedate  and  serious,  her  clean 
white  profile  sharply  outlined  in  the  lamplight. 

"  It's  queer,"  she  thought,  "  the  war  goes  on.  Nothing 
much  seems  to  happen.  It  might  be  going  on  for  ever, 
and  it's  making  a  sort  of  ditch  between  what  there  used 
to  be  and  what  there  will  be."  She  found  with  surprise 
that  she  did  not  clearly  remember  things  which  hap- 
pened in  1914,  visits  to  town,  picture  shows,  dances;  it 
was  all  rather  dim,  much  dimmer  than  were  in  1914 
things  that  had  happened  in  1912.  "  It's  the  war,  I  sup- 
pose," she  thought.  "  Being  so  much  bigger  it  has  made 
other  things  smaller."  She  smiled  at  the  thought.  "  I 
suppose  that  by  the  side  of  war  it  is  difficult  to  remember 
even  one's  coming-out  ball.  The  competition's  too 
great." 

Yet  a  few  persons  still  lived  in  her  consciousness,  like 
hills  rising  out  of  the  ground  mist.  She  thought  of  men 
she  had  known,  quite  a  lot  of  them.  Men  liked  Monica, 
and  many  had  seemed  to  harbour  for  her  something  more 
than  liking,  without  ever  coming  to  finality,  as  if  at  the 
last  moment  she  frightened  them;  her  good  looks  were 
perhaps  too  purely  good ;  they  made  men  uneasy,  because 
her  attraction  was  that  of  beauty  rather  than  of  pretti- 
ness,  and  so  men  drew  back  as  often  they  do  from  beauty, 
because  they  tend  to  hate  that  which  they  do  not  com- 
prehend. "  The  war,"  thought  Monica,  "  seems  to  have 
taken  everybody."  She  thought  of  Guy  Langrick,  that 
rowdy  subaltern,  who  had  so  hurriedly  married  Sylvia, 
then  fallen;  of  Jervaulx,  Sylvia's  second  husband,  in  an 
infantry  regiment,  a  P.  B.  I.,  as  he  put  it  (whatever  that 
might  mean).  Would  he  survive?  would  anybody  sur- 
vive? There  was  Arthur  Horton,  for  instance,  so  care- 


IN  ENGLAND  141 

less  as  to  seem  hard.  Monica  liked  Lord  Arthur;  he  was 
such  a  finished  product,  the  tail  end  of  a  line  of  men 
who  had  never  done  any  work,  and  devoted  all  their 
time  to  keeping  themselves  fit.  Hunting,  polo,  shooting, 
golf,  to  say  nothing  of  swimming,  dumb-bells,  and  the 
punching  ball,  had  kept  Lord  Arthur  fit.  She  smiled, 
for  there  was  something  lovable  in  Horton.  Once,  when 
he  had  confessed  this  ambition  to  keep  fit,  she  had  asked 
him:  "Fit  for  what?"  "Oh,  nothing,"  said  Horton 
gaily.  "Just  fit."  Abstract  fitness  was  like  abstract 
sanctity.  Both  were  unsocial. 

Well,  he  was  badly  wounded,  and  now  he  was  engaged. 
He  had  told  her  this  in  a  letter,  adding  that  troubles 
never  came  singly.  And  Hurn?  It  seemed  a  long  time 
since  Hurn  had  written  to  her.  What  a  long  time  ago,  too, 
since  she  and  Hurn  had  sat  for  a  long  time  on  the  terrace 
of  Knapenden,  reading  Pascal's  "  Pensees."  What  a 
serious  young  man  Hurn  was !  but  his  seriousness  pleased 
and  almost  moved  her.  He  had  the  narrow  face  of  a 
fanatic.  In  some  moods  Hurn  seemed  to  want  to  seize 
the  world  by  the  throat  to  make  it  confess  what  life 
meant.  "  That  fellow,"  Sir  Hugh  said,  "  would  cheer- 
fully go  to  the  stake  for  Locke's  '  Essay  on  the  Human 
Understanding.' " 

Monica  supposed  that  she  had  had  what  might  be 
called  passages  with  Hurn,  if  the  word  passages  expressed 
the  dour  intensity  of  his  interest  in  her.  She  presumed 
that  he  had  proposed  to  her  on  his  last  leave,  when  he 
harshly  told  her  that  she  was  the  only  woman  who 
seemed  real,  and  that  unless  he  could  have  her  by  his 
side  all  the  rest  of  his  life  he  would  feel  incomplete. 
She  had  not  replied.  Well,  it  was  not  exactly  a  ques- 
tion. Also  she  would  have  found  it  difficult  to  say  yes 
or  no.  It  would  have  been  interesting  to  marry  Hum; 


142  BLIND  ALLEY 

one  would  never  know  whether  he  would  not  detonate. 
(In  these  days  Monica  thought  in  terms  of  explosives.) 

He  had  not  written  for  a  long  time.  Three  weeks. 
She  missed  his  letters.  They  were  not  love  letters;  they 
were  mainly  war  letters,  like  everybody  else's,  but  every 
one  was  a  revelation  of  James  Hum,  of  a  man  tortured 
by  the  desire  to  do  the  right,  and  much  more  so  by  his 
inability  to  discern  it.  In  one  letter  he  had  revealed  his 
preoccupation: 

.  .  .  "  I  wish  the  show  would  start.  Perhaps  I'd  get 
a  chance  to  do  something.  Somehow  I  think  it  would  be 
better  to  be  a  dead  V.  C.  than  a  living  metaphysical  jig- 
saw." 

She  did  not  want  Hum  to  become  a  dead  V.  C.  She 
did  not  want  any  of  the  men  she  liked  to  get  the  V.  C., 
the  process  was  too  dangerous.  Let  Hum,  and  Stephen, 
and  the  others  do  their  bit  like  everybody,  yes,  but  they 
needn't  overdo  their  bit.  After  all,  the  people  who  cared 
for  them  had  rights  as  well  as  the  country.  Monica 
thought  of  the  women  who  prevented  their  men  from 
going,  who  hid  them  in  cellars  and  haystacks.  Of  course 
she  would  not  do  things  like  that,  but  still  Monica  was  a 
woman,  not  a  diagram,  and  she  knew  that  if  she  really 
cared,  she  would  want  her  man  to  come  back  without  his 
shield  rather  than  on  it.  She  wanted  no  more  dead. 
Bobbie  Marchmont  was  enough.  Poor  old  Bob!  How 
angry  he  was  when  she  slung  that  half  peach  into  his  eye. 

Her  thoughts  wandered  to  other  men,  to  that  new 
phantom  of  her  mind,  with  the  short,  curly,  brown  hair, 
the  pleasant  alertness,  the  bright  intelligent  blue  eyes. 
Interesting.  In  that  phrase  of  his.  How  did  it  run? 
Yes:  "  dreams  are  the  stuff  that  worlds  are  made  of!  " 
It  seemed  true.  What  a  strange  man  to  manage  an  ex- 
plosive factory.  Still,  it  had  been  in  his  family  many 


IN  ENGLAND  143 

years.  She  supposed  that  he  controlled  it  just  as  he 
would  control  any  other  business  belonging  to  his  family. 
That  phrase  of  his  was  poetry ;  but  then,  when  calling  on 
the  charge  hands'  esprit  de  corps,  he  had  likened  them  to 
the  prefects  in  a  public  school,  spoken  of  his  boyhood  at 
Winchester.  She  supposed  that  the  public  schools  were 
a  better  preparation  for  the  manufacture  of  cordite  than 
for  the  production  of  lyric  poetry. 

Still  she  sewed,  and  though  her  thoughts  were  vague 
they  naturally  centred  round  this  man,  as  if  for  the  first 
time  her  imagination  had  been  stirred.  She  remembered 
the  intensity  of  his  eyes.  Were  they  always  intent  like 
that?  or  had  he  indeed  stared  at  her  all  the  time?  As 
soon  as  this  question  occurred  to  her,  Cottenham  suddenly 
developed  a  personal  association  with  her.  Yes,  he  had 
seemed  to  look  only  at  her.  Accident,  of  course.  He  did 
not  know  her.  He  had  spoken  to  her  only  once  after  the 
fire.  But  romantic  imagination  would  not  so  easily  be 
set  aside.  Supposing  he  was  aware  of  her  as  a  woman? 
Well,  it  would  not  matter.  She  was  not  very  likely  to 
come  across  him  again.  A  pity,  in  a  way ;  he  was  attrac- 
tive to  her,  and  she  wished  that  the  Cottenhams  and  the 
Oakleys  could  know  one  another.  She  built  a  day- 
dream: she  and  Cottenham  walking  along  Udimore  Ridge 
towards  the  copse.  He  would  be  wearing  smelly  brown 
tweeds,  and  smoking  a  pipe,  and  she  would  be  wearing  her 
white  linen  coat  and  skirt.  No,  on  second  thoughts,  it 
would  be  too  cool  in  the  late  evenings.  Her  green  coat 
and  skirt  would  be  better.  Reville  had  made  rather  a 
success  of  that.  And  the  sun  would  sink  low  beyond  the 
green  hump  of  Fairlight;  he  would  say  subtle,  abrupt 
things  .  .  . 

Her  dream  was  too  purposeless  for  his  marriage  to 
trouble  her,  though  she  had  seen  Mrs.  Cottenham  once  in 


144  BLIND  ALLEY 

the  car,  waiting  outside  the  works.    How  beautiful  she 
was! 

It  would  not  matter,  she  thought,  inconsequently. 
Doubly  entrenched  behind  her  unawakened  purity  and 
the  standards  of  her  class,  it  did  not  occur  to  her  to  ques- 
tion her  own  safety. 


XXIII 

SIR  HUGH  found  his  uncle  in  his  garden,  slowly  smoking 
a  large  pipe.  More  than  ever  Charles  Oakley  looked 
eternal;  he  was  tightly  wedged  in  the  armchair  that  had 
become  rather  too  small  for  him.  His  dark  face  with 
the  Oakley  nose,  the  fine  bridge  of  which  had  lost  its 
sharpness  as  the  fat  of  age  collected  about  it,  looked  as 
if  he  were  meditating,  or  as  if  he  thought  of  nothing;  it 
was  impossible  to  tell  which.  He  sat  against  the  white 
wall,  with  the  tall  sunflowers  growing  behind,  like  sol- 
diers with  golden  helmets,  embowered  amongst  screaming 
dahlias,  gladiolas  insolently  erect,  shepherded  upon  the 
right  by  languid,  tall  hollyhocks,  on  the  left  by  straight 
and  sensual  tiger  lilies.  He  was  as  the  leader  of  a  battal- 
ion of  flowers.  He  sat  and  brooded,  and  in  the  hot,  still 
air  rings  rose  and  lingered  above  his  pipe  bowl.  He 
moved  not  at  all.  He  smoked,  as  it  were,  the  pipe  of 
eternity. 

The  old  man  was  pleased  to  see  his  nephew,  and  for 
a  time  they  talked  of  the  rich  garden,  of  the  troubles  in- 
herent in  it,  of  slugs  that  took  cover  craftily,  of  green-fly 
that  swarmed,  careless,  in  the  public  eye,  of  grafting 
new  life  on  the  old  apple  tree.  Sir  Hugh  thought  that  in 
his  bower  the  fat  old  man,  slowly  enjoying  his  tobacco, 
finding  strength  in  the  sunshine  and  the  scents,  soothed  to 


IN  ENGLAND  145 

drowsiness  by  the  humming  of  bees,  was  a  modern  Pan 
grown  old,  Pan  with  a  touch  of  Silenus.  But  the  charm 
could  not  endure.  Looking  out  over  Camber  Castle 
towards  the  sea,  they  could  see  a  little  destroyer,  swan- 
grey  upon  the  ash-grey  of  the  still  water.  She  was  far 
away,  neither  rose  nor  fell,  but  slowly  steamed  from  the 
unknown  of  the  west  into  the  unknown  of  the  east.  Burly 
little  ship  with  the  tortured  shape,  bristling  with  append- 
ages, guns,  turrets,  slim  wireless,  she  was  like  a  bulldog 
upon  the  water.  She  was  purposeful,  quiet,  but  capable, 
one  felt,  of  the  most  businesslike  murderousness.  She 
was  the  war.  So  very  soon  they  talked  about  the  war. 

They  were  not  pessimistic;  the  Germans  were  still 
pressing  Verdun,  but  Verdun  did  not  fall ;  always  Petain 
seemed  to  retire,  and  still  the  city  stood;  it  had  stood  so 
long  that  it  must  stand  forever.  The  Germans  had  failed 
at  Ypres,  too. 

"  It's  queer,"  said  Sir  Hugh,  "  those  two  towns  are 
hardly  towns,  I  suppose.  Just  smoking  dust  by  now. 
Names,  immortal  names.  And  yet,  if  the  Germans  were 
to  take  them  both,  after  a  few  weeks  we  should  believe 
with  the  newspapers  that  these  immortal  names  had  in 
the  hands  of  the  Germans  become  mortal  and  were  dead. 
What  hypocrites  we  are!  " 

Charles  Oakley  nodded  approval,  but  he  was  thinking 
of  something  else.  He  was  very  optimistic: 

"  Ah,  my  boy,"  he  said,  "  you're  always  thinking  about 
France.  You  forget  Russia.  There's  Brusiloff  advanc- 
ing all  along  the  line,  taking  scores  of  thousands  of 
prisoners  and  ten  towns  a  day  for  every  muddy  little 
village  we  might  capture  in  Flanders.  He's  in  Austria 
now,  he  has  taken  Czernowitz ;  his  cavalry  will  be  across 
the  Carpathians  in  a  day  or  two." 

"  Yes,  I  know,"  said  Sir  Hugh  meditatively.    He  thrust 


146  BLIND   ALLEY 

one  finger  after  the  other  into  the  nodding  bells  of  a  fox- 
glove. "  Yes,  great  things  may  happen  in  the  East." 

"  They  will  happen/'  said  the  old  man.  "  When  Tino 
has  been  got  out  of  the  way.  Though,  my  boy,  it  may  be 
more  difficult  to  get  Tino  out  of  the  way  than  the  young 
gentlemen  in  Downing  Street  think.  He's  promised  to 
demobilise  and  to  hold  a  new  election.  Perhaps  he  will, 
and  perhaps  he  won't.  With  a  Greek  you  can  never  be 
sure  that  he'll  do  a  thing  until  he's  done  it,  and  by  that 
time  he's  done  you" 

"  I  suppose  that  like  the  others,"  said  Sir  Hugh,  "  you 
want  to  string  up  Tino.  Poor  Tino !  do  you  know,  uncle, 
I  believe  I'm  the  only  Tino-ite  in  England.  He  doesn't 
want  to  land  his  people  into  a  war;  his  Prime  Minister 
did  ask  us  in,  but  now  he's  got  a  new  Prime  Minister,  and 
the  new  Prime  Minister  doesn't  want  the  people  to  fight. 
Tino  doesn't  want  to  be  massacred  by  the  Germans,  or 
massacred  by  us.  He  doesn't  believe  we're  running  the 
show  properly,  and  yet  he  can't  quarrel  with  us.  If  you 
remember  that  he's  a  soldier  by  trade  and  hates  the  Bui- 
gar  by  heredity,  he'll  strike  you  as  a  public-spirited  citi- 
zen." 

"  Politics!  "  snorted  the  old  man.  "  Anyhow  we  can  do 
without  Tino.  Come  inside  and  see  the  map,  and  you'll 
see  what  that  Salonica  business  can  lead  to." 

They  went  into  the  library,  and  for  a  long  time  studied 
the  confusion  of  rivers  and  ridges  which  make  up  South- 
ern Serbia.  The  old  man  knew  his  subject;  all  his  ener- 
gies seemed  to  have  been  absorbed  by  this  study.  With 
a  trembling  red  finger  he  pushed  the  Italians  up  Albania, 
enveloped  Monastir  with  Serbs,  and  drove  a  triumphant 
Franco-British  Army  up  the  Vardar,  stodgy  infantry, 
slogging  along,  cavalry  prancing,  field  artillery  firing 
madly  in  all  directions,  and  finally  stuck  a  triumphant 


IN  ENGLAND  147 

flag  into  Nish,  thus  cutting  the  Constantinople  railway. 
He  was  childish  and  charming;  smiling  a  broad,  toothless 
smile,  he  looked  as  if  about  to  crow. 

"  Well,"  said  Lady  Oakley,  "  how  did  you  find  him 
to-day?  " 

"  Oh,"  said  Sir  Hugh,  "  he's  like  the  others.  The  only 
thing  he  thinks  of  is  the  war." 

"  There's  nothing  else  to  think  of." 

"  No,  I  suppose  not.  Still,  Lena,  there  have  been  wars 
before.  Uncle  Charles  seems  to  remember  wars  more 
than  anything  else.  To-day  he  again  told  me  the  story 
of  my  father's  voyage  from  Azof  to  Scutari.  What  a  hell 
a  hospital  ship  must  have  been  in  '54 !  Funny,  we're  still 
very  close  to  the  Crimea,  but  it's  queer  to  hear  a  man 
talking  about  it  as  something  that  once  upon  a  time  was 
news." 

"  Rather  stale  news,  Hugh,"  said  Lady  Oakley. 

"  Not  to  him.  Father  was  in  the  Crimea,  Uncle 
Charles  was  in  the  Mutiny,  and  he  did  something  at 
Plevna  too,  in  78.  To  him  war  is  always  the  latest.  He's 
war  mad  in  a  way." 

"  I  shouldn't  call  him  war  mad,"  said  Lady  Oakley. 
"  Of  course  war  is  bound  to  affect  men.  Women  too,"  she 
added  reflectively.  "  Look  at  the  way  girls  run  after  the 
soldiers." 

"  Do  they?  I  mean  do  they  run  after  soldiers  mor6 
than  they  usually  run  after  men?  " 

"  Oh,  I  don't  know,"  said  Lady  Oakley;  she  was  no 
sociologist.  "  Perhaps  one  just  notices  it  more.  Look 
at  Westcott,  for  instance ;  she  never  cared  for  Sutton  until 
he  joined  up." 

"Poor  Sutton!"  said  Sir  Hugh,  "such  a  nice,  well- 
spoken  young  man.  He  didn't  have  a  chance  to  do  much. 
It  seems  hard  that  a  man  should  be  shot  half  an  hour 


148  BLIND  ALLEY 

after  reaching  the  front ;  it's  as  if  he  hadn't  had  his  whack. 
Is  Westcott  much  upset?  " 

"  Westcott!  "  said  Lady  Oakley,  with  a  touch  of  sar- 
casm. "  Of  course  she's  upset.  If  you  knew  Westcott 
as  well  as  I  do  you'd  know  she  wouldn't  miss  a  chance  of 
being  theatrical.  But  then  that's  Westcott  all  over. 
She's  been  with  me  four  years,  and  she's  had  a  tragedy 
every  autumn,  this  being  probably  the  result  of  impru- 
dence in  the  spring.  When  Temple  got  married  she  used 
to  cry  down  the  back  of  my  neck  as  she  did  my  hair ;  now 
she's  crying  about  Sutton,  and  at  the  same  time  she  tells 
me  she  has  had  a  letter  from  young  Keele,  and  don't  I 
think  an  engineer  nearer  a  gentleman  than  a  farmer." 

Sir  Hugh  smiled.  "  Well,  Lena,  she's  young.  She  may 
be  a  bit  soldier-mad,  as  you  say.  Still  she's  not  as  badly 
off  as  poor  Molly  Hart.  Cradoc's  been  given  three 
months'  detention,  you  know,  for  refusing  to  put  on  his 
uniform." 

"  He  ought  to  be  flogged!  " 

Sir  Hugh  frowned.  "  I  wish  you  wouldn't  talk  like 
that,  Lena.  I  don't  defend  conscientious  objectors,  but 
we  don't  flog  people." 

"  If  we  did,  we  might  keep  down  the  sedition  and  dis- 
loyalty with  which  this  country  is  honeycombed." 

"  I  don't  think  so.  We  used  to  hang  men  for  stealing 
five  shillings,  and  they  went  on  stealing.  In  Italy  they 
stopped  capital  punishment,  and  the  murder  rate  didn't 
go  up.  Punishment  doesn't  alter  things;  it  only  makes 
the  executioner  vile." 

"  Surely  you  don't  mean  that  punishment  should  be 
done  away  with?  If  there  was  nothing  to  deter  people, 
everybody  would  commit  crimes." 

Sir  Hugh  did  not  reply.  He  half  agreed  with  her,  but 
still  felt  uneasy;  he  had  not  arrived  at  lucidity.  He  was 


IN  ENGLAND  149 

not  able  to  formulate  his  own  feeling.  He  asked  himself 
why  he  didn't  want  to  commit  crimes,  and  concluded  that 
if  the  rich  were  not  tempted  to  crime,  it  must  be  because 
they  enjoyed  the  proceeds  of  the  crimes  of  their  ancestors. 
So  he  hurried  into  generalities. 

"  What  I  mean  about  brutal  punishments,  like  flogging, 
is  that  it  doesn't  influence  the  man  you  flog.  One  could  see 
that  in  the  army  in  the  old  days,  when  men  were  flogged 
time  after  time.  Punishment  influences  the  men  who  do 
the  flogging ;  it  brutalizes  them ;  they  learn  to  inflict  pain 
without  compunction.  The  cat-o'-nine-tails  does  not 
make  as  deep  scars  on  the  back  of  the  victim  as  on  the 
soul  of  the  one  who  uses  it." 

"  Barry's  called  up,"  said  Lady  Oakley,  "  and  Abbey 
will  have  to  join  up  in  July.  I  suppose  old  Mrs.  Abbey 
can  carry  on  the  shop."  She  was  not  listening.  And  she 
disliked  generalities. 

XXIV 

"YES,"  said  Irvine,  "  there's  something  in  it."  His 
finger  traced  the  details  of  the  machine.  "  Yes,  I  see. 
It  might  save  labour.  I'm  afraid  it  wouldn't  run  cheap ; 
there's  an  awful  lot  of  maintenance  in  those  automatics." 

"  Well,  you  know  our  trouble's  labour.  It  isn't  so 
much  a  question  of  costs.  We  can  get  those  back  in  the 
price." 

"  Yes,  I  suppose  we  can.  Though  it's  awkward.  Three 
years  ago,  nobody  could  have  done  this  work  beyond  our- 
selves, and  Bickford-Smith,  and  two  or  three  more.  Now 
little  explosive  shops  are  springing  up  all  over  the  coun- 
try. They'll  cut  our  prices  for  us.  And  they  don't  care 
about  T.  N.  T.  poisoning;  one  girl  dead,  another  comes 
on. 


150  BLIND  ALLEY 

"  That's  being  stopped,"  said  Cottenham,  "  you  know 
quite  well  the  bother  we're  having  every  other  day  with 
medical  inspectors  and  Home  Office  people.  Now,  with 
a  machine  like  this,  with  a  pneumatic  exhaust,  you  simply 
can't  get  any  fumes;  the  down  draught  will  keep  the 
charging  plate  clear  of  dust.  Don't  you  see,  Irvine,  this 
machine  is  the  end  of  T.  N.  T.  sickness.  Before  three 
months  are  out  all  the  little  shops  will  have  to  toe  the 
line,  so  let's  be  first.  Anyhow,  I'm  going  to  try  it.  We've 
ordered  the  machine,  and  I  want  to  turn  a  shop  over  to 
it." 

"  We  can't  turn  the  whole  of  '  C  '  over.  We'd  want 
four  machines  to  meet  their  output.  I  don't  think  it'd  do 
to  have  some  girls  working  on  the  old  presses  and  some  on 
this  thing;  we  couldn't  keep  their  earnings  level,  and 
that'd  make  discontent." 

"  It  will  have  to  be  experimental,"  said  Cottenham, 
"  I  want  four  average  girls,  and  a  first-class  charge  hand." 

Irvine  crossed  the  office  to  look  at  the  plant  of  the  fac- 
tory. "  Well,  there's  the  little  shop  in  '  D.'  There  are 
six  girls  there,  pressing  blocks;  their  charge  hand,  a  Miss 
Nevin,  is  very  smart." 

"  What  sort  of  girl  is  the  Nevin  girl?  "  asked  Cotten- 
ham negligently.  "  I  mean  what  class  of  girl?  " 

"  Oh,  the  ordinary  class.  Rather  rough,  but  plenty  of 
brains.  The  sort  of  girl  who  could  run  a  teashop." 

"  Oh,  that's  not  it  at  all,"  said  Cottenham.  "  Experi- 
mental work  wants  quite  another  kind  of  intelligence, 
Irvine,  imagination,  all  that  sort  of  thing.  Here,  let  me 
look.  What's  that  little  shop  in  '  E  '?  " 

"Oh,  you  can't  have  that;  they're  casting  containers. 
We're  pressed  for  those;  you  can't  have  that  one." 

"  Well,  what  about  '  C  '  ?  "  said  Cottenham. 

"  'C? '    Well,  there's  Miss  Hayes.    No,  she's  away  ill." 


IN  ENGLAND  151 

Cottenham  seemed  thoughtful.  "  What's  the  name  of 
the  girl  in  *  C  '  whom  we've  just  made  a  charge  hand? 
Ockley,  isn't  it?  Would  she  do?  " 

"  Miss  Oakley?  Oh,  yes,"  said  Irvine;  "  not  very  ex- 
perienced, you  know." 

"  You're  sure  you  can't  spare  the  container  girls?  " 
said  Cottenham. 

"  Absolutely  impossible." 

"  Oh,  well,  we  must  make  the  best  of  it.  You  might 
send  Miss  Oakley  to  me  in  the  morning,  or  after  lunch. 
Any  time  will  do." 

Monica  received  the  summons  with  a  certain  anxiety. 
An  interview  with  the  proprietor,  Ivy  Badger  informed 
her,  meant  either  promotion  or  the  push,  and  as  she  had 
just  been  promoted  it  must  mean  the  push.  She  felt 
innocent  of  misconduct,  also  excited.  But  soon  her  ex- 
citement lapsed,  for  Cottenham  seemed  strictly  business- 
like. 

"  I've  asked  you  to  come  round,"  he  said,  after  ex- 
plaining in  detail  the  working  of  the  mechanism,  "because 
I  want  you  to  know  exactly  what  you're  doing.  This  is 
a  most  important  experiment.  If  it's  a  success  we're 
likely  to  buy  at  least  fifty  of  these  machines,  and  they'll 
cost  £6000.  So  we're  relying  on  you  to  get  true  results." 

Monica  felt  shy.  "  Of  course  I'm  very  glad  you  thought 
of  me,"  she  murmured,  "  but  supposing  I  make  a  mess  of 
it?" 

"  Oh,  you  won't  make  a  mess  of  it.  If  you  don't  mind 
my  saying  so,  it's  because  I  know  how  cool  you  were  dur- 
ing the  fire  that  I  want  you  to  take  this  on.  Now  this  is 
what  we  want." 

He  explained  at  length  how  the  output  of  the  machine 
was  to  be  tested  at  frequent  intervals;  he  would  need  a 
chart  kept,  showing  time  lost  by  breakdowns  and  by  ad- 


152  BLIND  ALLEY 

justments;  and  she  must  pay  particular  attention  to  the, 
behaviour  of  the  T.  N.  T.  under  hygrometric  conditions 
which  would  be  made  variable. 

"  I  want  to  be  sure,"  he  said,  "  that  these  machines  act 
equally  well  in  heat  and  cold,  in  dry  weather  and  in  wet. 
And  also  there  is  the  question  of  poisoning.  I  shall  want 
you  to  swab  the  charging  plate  yourself,  and  to  see  to  it 
that  the  rag  goes  to  the  laboratory  without  being  shaken, 
so  that  we  may  see  whether  fumes  are  sublimating  on  it." 

"  Well,"  said  Monica,  "  it  all  sounds  very  difficult,  but 
I'll  do  my  best." 

"  I'm  so  glad,"  said  Cottenham.  Then,  as  Monica 
turned  to  go.  "  Miss  Oakley,  do  you  mind  my  asking  if 
you  have  had  any  previous  experience  in  this  sort  of 
work?  " 

"  No,  but  it  isn't  very  difficult,  most  of  it." 

"  No,  I  don't  say  it  is.  But  industrial  work  is  much 
alike,  whether  it's  on  explosives  or  on  making  linoleum. 
Where  were  you  working  before  you  came  here?  " 

"  This  is  the  first  time  I've  done  any  work,"  said  Mon- 
ica, smiling.  "  Real  work,  I  mean." 

He  smiled  back  at  her.  "  Oh,  I  see,  just  dusting  the 
drawing-room." 

"  No,  not  exactly  that,"  said  Monica.  She  was  a  little 
distraite.  Cottenham  had  pleasant,  regular  teeth.  "No, 
I'm  afraid  I  can't  claim  even  that,  Mr.  Cottenham.  You 
see,  I  live  in  the  country  with  my  people,  not  very  far 
from  here." 

"Oh?"  said  Cottenham.  "Whereabouts?  I  motor 
about  Kent  a  good  deal.  I  expect  I  know  your  native 
village." 

"  It's  just  over  the  border,  in  Sussex,  at  a  place  called 
Knapenden.  I  don't  suppose  you  know  it." 

"  No,  I'm  afraid  I've  never  heard  of  Knapenden." 


IN  ENGLAND  153 

"  Oh,  it's  a  lovely  place,"  said  Monica,  as  if  to  her- 
self. "  Our  house  is  on  top  of  the  ridge,  a  few  miles  from 
the  sea.  There's  just  the  marshes  in  between,  grey 
marshes  with  flocks  of  sheep  that  look  quite  small,  far 
away,  as  if  somebody  had  upset  a  Noah's  Ark.  And  it's 
so  still  in  the  afternoon.  All  you  hear  is  the  cawing  of 
the  crows  as  they  rise.  And  sometimes  the  starlings  fly 
out  all  together  from  a  copse.  Their  wings  make  a  sound 
like  a  sail  filling  with  wind." 

"  It  sounds  lovely,"  said  Cottenham  truthfully,  but  he 
was  less  conscious  of  the  mellow  charm  of  the  place  she 
conjured  up  than  of  the  soft  glow  in  her  grey  eyes  and 
the  faint  flush  that  rose  in  her  pale  cheeks.  How  ador- 
able she  looked,  light  as  a  goblin;  no,  she  was  too  tall  and 
slim  for  a  goblin ;  a  wood  nymph  rather.  A  wood  nymph 
that  would  run  on  long,  fleet  legs  through  the  thickets  of 
birch,  and  sometimes  between  the  trunks,  one  would  see, 
passing  swift  as  a  gull,  her  white  flank." 

"  How  gracefully  you  put  it !  "  said  Cottenham.  "  You 
paint  with  words  as  others  express  with  sound.  You're 
like  Locatelli's  Pavane."  , 

Monica  looked  at  him  seriously.  She  did  not  know 
wThat  he  meant,  but  the  rhythm  of  the  word  Locatelli 
pleased  her. 

"  I  move  in  more  prosaic  surroundings,"  said  Cotten- 
ham. "  My  house,  three  miles  from  here,  is  fair  and 
square,  thoroughly  Georgian,  thoroughly  English,  with 
clipped  bushes  of  box.  My  romance  is  in  the  muddy 
foreshores  of  the  Medway,  which  in  the  setting  sun  are 
as  purple  and  rose  as  a  mosaic  in  Byzantium.  It's  not 
unpleasant.  It  is  reality.  It's  so  very  much  England. 
But  still,  what  does  it  matter?  The  place  one's  in  does 
not  matter  so  much  as  what  one  is.  Happiness  does  not 
rise  from  the  meadows  like  a  will-o'-the-wisp:  happiness 


154  BLIND  ALLEY 

is  rather  a  will-o'-the-wisp  that  flits  in  one's  own  heart. 
A  heart  is  a  small  thing,  but  there's  plenty  of  room  in  it 
for  a  will-o'-the-wisp  to  elude  one." 

Monica  was  moved.  There  was  a  hint  of  sadness  in 
his  voice,  and  something  in  her  responded.  Suddenly 
she  felt  self-conscious.  This  was  her  employer.  It  was 
all  very  well  his  being  a  good-looking  man  under  forty 
who  said  pleasant  things.  But  she  had  not  come  here  to 
exchange  poetic  impressions.  She  grew  clumsy. 

"  I  must  go,"  she  said. 

He  smiled.  "  Yes,  I'm  afraid  you  must.  You'll  be 
losing  time  if  you  don't,  or  shall  I  tell  the  unit  that  you 
are  to  be  paid  time  and  a  half  for  having  had  to  talk  to  a 
middle-aged  and  decrepit  employer?  " 

Monica  threw  him  a  sidelong  smile,  and  flushing  a 
little  went  out. 

As  soon  as  the  door  closed  Cottenham  pressed  a  bell. 
"  Miss  Kingston,"  he  said  to  his  secretary,  "  please  give 
me  the  Kent  and  Sussex  Directory."  He  turned  to 
Knapenden.  A  very  small  place  evidently.  Oh,  there 
was  only  one  Oakley  in  Knapenden.  Then  he  stared  as 
he  realised,  as  he  put  it,  what  he  was  in  for. 


XXV 

JUNE  was  passing.  Under  the  speckless,  purple  sky, 
humanity  crawled  in  the  steamy  air  that  rose  from  the 
Medway  and  the  docks.  During  the  long  day-shift  the 
girls  were  listless  and  lazy;  often  they  quarrelled.  Ivy 
Badger  was  suspended  for  two  days  for  fighting  Muriel 
Penn.  She  took  it  well,  remarking  "  that  she  didn't  mind 
being  suspended  for  'er;  it'd  be  worth  while  being  'ung  to 
make  her  face  ugly,  except  that  she  didn't  think  it  could 


IN   ENGLAND  155 

get  much  worse."  The  output  went  down,  and  the  unit 
foreman  was  pestered  with  unusual  demands  to  be  put  on 
night-shift. 

The  weight  of  the  heavy  summer  lay  on  Monica  as  on 
the  others.  It  affected  her  work,  the  charge  of  the  new 
machines  and  the  responsibility  to  her  employer  now 
gave  her  less  intellectual  stimulus.  It  was  exacting  work, 
for  the  new  machine,  as  is  the  way  with  new  machines, 
worked  very  badly  and  continually  demanded  readjust- 
ment. It  was  a  splendid  packer,  but  it  choked  badly. 
And  Cottenham's  hygrometric  variations  were  perfectly 
awful ;  the  artificial  draughts,  too,  demanding  a  continual 
watch  over  the  dry  and  wet  bulb  temperatures,  seemed  to 
cause  unnecessarily  obscure  disturbances  in  the  T.N.T. 
powder.  So,  in  the  evening,  Monica  found  herself  tired, 
not  so  much  in  body  as  in  mind,  and  this  weariness  took 
the  form  of  an  increasing  homesickness.  She  found  her- 
self staring  writh  a  sort  of  hatred  at  the  mud  flats  of  Tem- 
ple Marlh,  at  the  dry,  baked  fields  round  Fort  Pitt;  she 
was  brought  near  to  tears  as  she  remembered  Sussex, 
green,  rich  and  rolling.  So  now  she  had  not  the  energy  to 
visit  the  Saltaire  girls  and  to  become  the  confidant  of 
their  adventures.  The  Saltaires  loved  horses  and  horse- 
men. That  was  all  right,  but  they  loved  too  many  horse- 
men, or  rather  in  these  days  airmen,  jollies,  gunners,  sap- 
pers, perhaps  even  snotties.  One  of  them  came  down  to 
an  A.  0.  D.  but  said  nothing  about  it. 

"  I  can't  sing  arms  and  the  man,"  thought  Monica,  nor 
could  she  sew  or  read.  An  intangible  disturbance  ran 
through  her.  She  wanted  silence  and  open  spaces,  places 
where  she  could  think.  Yet  she  did  not  think  clearly  in 
those  open  spaces;  she  could  feel,  in  a  lost  way,  but  could 
find  no  reassurance  against  a  sense  of  impending  and  in- 
evitable peril.  A  not  entirely  disagreeable  peril,  yet  a 


156  BLIND   ALLEY 

peril.  She  was  flying,  as  a  nymph  pursued,  from  a  satyr 
that  dwelt  in  her  own  heart. 

In  spite  of  the  heat,  as  if  moved  by  an  instinct  to  ex- 
haust her  body  so  as  to  dull  her  mind,  she  now  took  long 
walks  after  dinner.  They  helped  her,  for  the  fresh  night 
revived  in  her  some  energy,  and  when  at  last  she  came 
back,  dusty,  sweaty,  when  she  had  washed,  she  went  to 
sleep  at  once ;  yet  all  the  time  she  was  conscious  of  a  need 
which  she  called  loneliness.  She  knew  without  recognis- 
ing it  that  a  precise  need  was  forming  in  her  which  she 
had  not  known  before.  It  made  her  afraid  and  unhappy, 
this  aching  space  in  her  heart.  Like  a  fresh-dug  grave 
waiting  for  its  corpse.  It  was  absurd,  she  felt ;  she  ought 
to  have  been  glad.  But  Monica  was  resolutely  a  mate- 
rialist, and  so  she  realised  that  the  future  could  reserve 
her  no  good.  If  this  desire  developed  in  her,  she  could 
hardly  attain  it,  except  at  a  price  which,  her  traditions 
told  her,  she  could  not  pay.  And  if  she  refused  to  pay 
this  price  she  would  always  regret  her  niggardliness. 

One  night,  when  she  had  wandered  far  out  of  the  town, 
up  the  Medway,  she  examined  her  conscience.  The  re- 
sult lacked  clarity.  "  After  all,"  she  thought,  "  what 
reason  have  you  to  worry?  He  has  given  you  no  special 
sign  of  interest.  You  yourself  are  not  so  interested  as  all 
that.  You  have  known  such  interests  before,  and  they 
faded.  And  time  passed."  She  had  faith  in  the  day  that 
rises  like  the  tide,  and  like  the  falling  tide  bears  away 
light  objects  from  the  shore.  And  of  course  this  was  a 
light  object. 

For  three  days  after  the  discovery  of  Monica's  parent- 
age Cottenham  lived  in  hesitations.  Really,  it  was  a  bit 
too  thick.  He  had  in  regard  to  women  the  crude  intelli- 
gence of  the  man  who  has  been  familiar  with  many.  He 
had  known  the  realities  of  passion  before  he  was  fifteen, 


IN   ENGLAND  157 

and  for  twenty-four  years  had  found  in  them  his  chief 
pleasures,  not  necessarily  crude  pleasures,  but  the  means 
of  stimulating  his  emotions,  and  of  maintaining  his  ro- 
mantic youth.  Generally  he  had  drifted  into  contact 
with  women  of  the  poorer  classes ;  in  this  he  resembled  his 
fellows,  but  there  was  a  difference:  Cottenham  preferred 
the  girls  of  the  people.  Not  only  did  his  fastidious  ele- 
gance find  an  excitement  in  the  coarser  grain,  but  he  val- 
ued in  the  girls  of  the  people  an  affectionateness  not  over- 
laid by  gentility,  a  capacity  for  whole-hearted  giving, 
buoyancy,  beautiful  shamelessness ;  his  own  finesse  de- 
lighted in  the  primitive.  But  he  also  confessed  to  him- 
self that  he  was  not  above  certain  satisfactions  of  vanity, 
that  he  enjoyed  the  easy  royalty  that  his  good  clothes, 
his  well- cut  hair,  his  well-kept  hands,  his  air  of  wealth 
and  luxury,  gave  him  among  the  girls  who  did  not  find 
this  type  of  man  among  their  own  friends. 

A  faintly  cynical  materialism  told  him  also  that  such 
affairs  did  not  engage  him  too  deeply,  that  these  con- 
tests were  gloved,  that  marriage  was  not  thought  of, 
scandal  unlikely,  silence  purchasable;  he  knew  that  no 
artificial  value  was  put  on  their  surrender  by  girls  who 
could  depend  on  their  own  labour  and  need  not  maintain 
an  unspotted  reputation  to  sell  in  the  marriage  market, 
because  they  had  something  to  sell  in  the  industrial 
market. 

His  adventures  among  his  own  kind  had  not  been  very 
many,  but  had  been  enough  to  convince  him  that  they 
were  horribly  complicated:  there  was  such  a  lot  of  hiding. 
And  women  of  a  gentler  culture  seemed  to  think  that  they 
were  doing  something  so  dramatic  and  condescending  in 
listening  to  him.  It  was  irritating,  rather,  and  when  now 
and  then  it  proved  inevitable,  which  did  happen  because 
Cottenham  only  resisted  his  desires  until  it  looked  as  if 


158  BLIND   ALLEY 

his  resistance  would  prove  effective,  he  always  told  him- 
self it  was  not  worth  while. 

"  The  gently  bred  woman,"  he  said  once,  "  is  either  so 
light  that  she  doesn't  know  what  you  mean  when  you  tell 
her  that  you  love  her,  or  so  excessive  that  she  insists  upon 
running  away  with  you." 

So  his  experience,  his  common  sense,  told  him  to  think 
no  more  of  Monica.  He  knew  that  he  was  not  prepared 
for  her  sake  to  give  up  his  children,  which  would  hap- 
pen if  there  were  trouble.  Nor  was  he  prepared  to  give 
up  Julia.  Cottenham  saw  no  reason  why  he  should  give 
up  either  Julia  or  Monica.  Nor  indeed  why  he  should 
not  retain  his  interest  in  both,  if  yet  a  third  charm  gained 
possession  of  his  mind.  "  I  ought  to  have  been  a  Turk," 
he  reflected.  "  But  every  man  is  at  heart  a  Turk." 

In  some  moods  he  told  himself  not  to  be  so  extreme. 
After  all,  Monica  Oakley  had  shown  no  sign  of  interest 
in  him.  He  thought  her  good-looking.  Well !  there  were 
lots  of  good-looking  girls,  and  he  was  none  the  worse  for 
knowing  it.  He  was  on  speaking  terms  with  a  number  of 
pretty  women,  and  that  did  him  no  harm.  Supposing  he 
did  come  to  know  her  better?  Well,  it  would  be  delight- 
ful, and  he  did  not  see  that  this  would  cause  complica- 
tions. Being  assured  that  closer  acquaintance  with 
Monica  could  cause  no  trouble,  he  decided  never  to  see 
her  again.  Having  decided  never  to  see  her  again,  he 
bought  a  plan  of  Rochester,  telling  himself  that  a  lonely 
girl  must  take  walks,  and  that  just  for  curiosity's  sake  he 
would  like  to  know  where  she  might  be  going. 

There  were  not  many  directions  that  could  tempt  a 
wanderer  from  Castle  Hill.  Nobody  would  think  of 
crossing  the  bridge  into  the  little  black  slums  of  Stroud, 
nor,  after  a  long  day  in  a  factory,  would  a  girl  with 
thoughtful  grey  eyes  wander  up  the  High  Street  towards 


IN   ENGLAND  159 

Chatham.  Unless  she  went  to  the  Cinema.  But  he  felt 
that  Monica  would  not  often  go  to  the  Cinema.  No,  she 
might  go  up  to  Fort  Pitt,  where  the  ground  was  high  and 
clear.  But  it  seemed  more  likely  that  she  should  take 
the  natural  road  along  the  Medway.  Or,  perhaps  not, 
for  that  led  past  the  factory:  a  worker  would  avoid  the 
road  followed  every  morning  and  evening.  She  would 
not  go  along  the  Medway,  nor  up  the  Borstal  Road.  That 
left  only  one  avenue,  the  Maidstone  Road  that  wanders 
through  villas  into  the  open  air. 

"  It's  a  nice  straight  road,  the  Maidstone  Road,"  he 
thought.  "  I'm  rather  tired  of  it,  having  to  motor  up  and 
down  daily.  Still,  on  these  hot  nights,  one's  glad  to  get 
into  the  open,  anywhere." 

One  cool,  clear  night,  when  a  crisp  crescent  of  moon 
hung  low,  Monica,  slowly  walking  north  along  the  Maid- 
stone  Road,  saw  a  car  come  towards  her.  As  it  drew 
nearer  it  began  to  miss  violently,  to  slow  up;  then  it 
stopped,  and  a  man,  jumping  out,  raised  the  bonnet,  began 
to  prod  the  machinery.  As  she  drew  near,  he  turned  to 
her  and  cried: 

"  Do  you  happen  to  have  a  match?  " 

"  No,"  said  Monica,  coming  closer. 

"  Hullo !  "  said  Cottenham,  for  it  was  he,  "  Miss  Oak- 
ley! What  are  you  doing  here?  " 

"  I'm  taking  a  walk,"  said  Monica,  and  asked  herself 
why  she  felt  so  embarrassed. 

"  Oh,  it's  beautifully  cool,  isn't  it?  I  congratulate  you 
on  having  decided  to  walk;  I  wish  I'd  done  so  too,  for  by 
the  look  of  it  this  car  has  broken  down  for  the  night !  " 

"  What  a  pity,"  said  Monica  sympathetically.  "  What 
are  you  going  to  do?  " 

"  Well,  I  don't  know.  Something's  gone,  and  I  can't 
see  what  it  is.  The  poor  thing  will  have  to  sleep  in  the 


160  BLIND  ALLEY 

ditch,  I'm  afraid.  The  trouble  is,"  he  went  on  medita- 
tively, "  that  I  want  to  run  her  into  Maidstone  to-morrow 
morning,  and  I  can't  take  the  train,  as  the  first  is  too 
early  and  the  second's  too  late.  Look  here,  Miss  Oakley, 
I  wonder  whether  you  could,  on  your  way  back,  call  at 
the  first  garage  you  see  in  Rochester,  and  ask  them  to 
send  a  mechanic.  No,  of  course  not;  ridiculous,  I  couldn't 
trouble  you." 

"  Oh,  I'd  be  very  glad." 

"  No,  on  second  thoughts  I  don't  see  the  fun  of  sitting 
here  for  an  hour  waiting  for  the  man.  It's  very  kind  of 
you,  but  I  think  I'll  walk  into  Rochester  and  bring  him 
back." 

In  a  moment,  marvellously  it  seemed,  the  two  were 
walking  side  by  side  on  the  high  road. 

Monica  was  stirred  and  a  little  afraid.  She  did  not 
know  what  she  felt  afraid  of,  until,  still  silent,  he  filled 
and  lit  his  pipe.  Then  she  realised  why  she  was  afraid: 
he  was  wearing  a  brown  suit,  as  in  that  day-dream  of  hers, 
and  as  in  the  dream  he  smoked  a  pipe  as  he  went  by  her 
side.  Actual  life,  repeating  a  half-formed  desire,  terrified 
her;  she  was  afraid  he  would  ask  her  some  question,  for 
she  did  not  know  if  she  would  find  enough  self-possession 
to  reply.  Fortunately  it  did  not  prove  necessary,  for 
soon  Cottenham  began  to  talk. 

"  I  wonder,"  he  said,  "  whether  you've  ever  motored  at 
night.  It's  much  more  beautiful  than  in  the  daytime. 
When  it's  dark  you  are  lost  between  a  black  earth  and  a 
secret  sky.  The  features  of  the  earth  are  fluid,  for  you 
won't  know  that  you  are  upon  a  hill,  at  least  until  you 
reach  its  crest,  which  lies  before  you  anonymous,  and  be- 
yond which  is  the  void.  The  void,  don't  you  think,  is 
necessarily  romantic,  for  you  don't  know  what  may  be 
there." 


IN  ENGLAND  161 

Monica  nodded. 

"  Yes,"  he  went  on,  "  somehow  every  crest  beyond 
which  droops  the  land,  every  turn  of  the  road  beyond 
which  it  hides,  contains  romance.  One  is  a  seeker,  and 
one  may  find  —  Oh,  anything.  A  sedan  chair  drawn  up 
by  the  side  of  the  road,  a  gentleman  in  ruffles  and  a  lady 
in  a  garment  of  flowered  silk,  with  a  Watteau  pleat  down 
her  back,  both  of  them  dancing  while  a  wandering  fiddler 
plays,  shall  we  say  '  Lady  Greensleeves.'  Do  you  know 
'  Lady  Greensleeves  '  ?  " 

"  No,"  said  Monica;  then  with  an  effort:  "  What  is  it?  " 

"  An  old  Elizabethan  melody.  I  wish  I  could  sing  it  to 
you.  It  runs  something  like  this: 

"  Greensleeves  was  all  my  joy, 
Greensleeves  was  my  delight, 
Greensleeves  was  my  heart  of  gold, 
And  oh!  for  Lady  Greensleeves." 

They  looked  at  each  other  for  a  moment  and  in  their 
eyes  were  mute  questions.  Monica  found  herself  more 
than  ever  afraid.  She  was  passionately  unawakened, 
but  still  she  was  twenty-six,  and  she  could  not  misunder- 
stand what  lay  behind  the  gracefulness  of  speech  and  the 
softness  of  the  blue  eyes  that  shone  a  little  in  the  night. 
She  was  afraid  of  that  softness  and  that  grace ;  she  wished 
that  Cottenham  were  more  like  the  men  in  the  proof 
yard,  who  called  after  her  gross  things  she  did  not  under- 
stand. Or  like  the  Australians  who  sometimes  barred  her 
way  in  the  High  Street,  or  like  the  warehouse  clerks  who 
followed  her  with  leering  invitations.  She  remembered 
one  of  them,  and  her  sense  of  humour  asserting  itself,  she 
began  uncontrollably  to  laugh. 

"  What  is  it?  "  asked  Cottenham.  He  looked  vaguely 
offended.  "  What  have  I  said?  " 


162  BLIND  ALLEY 

"  Oh,  I  beg  your  pardon/'  said  Monica,  "  it  wasn't 
anything  you  said.  I  liked  what  you  were  saying,  but  I 
was  thinking  of  a  man  who  spoke  to  me  the  other  day  in 
the  High  Street." 

"  Yes?  " 

"What  he  said  was:  '  Oh,  I  say,  Miss,  do  come  and 
'ave  a  dry  ginger.'  " 

Both  laughed  together,  and  in  this  laughter  some  of  the 
fear  evanesced.  Still,  both  were  conscious  that  by  laugh- 
ing together  at  a  confidence  in  which  lay  a  certain  inti- 
macy of  confession,  they  had  drawn  closer  together.  As 
they  entered  Rochester,  Monica  could  not  shake  off  that 
new  impression.  Nor  he;  he  knew  pretty  well  what  she 
was  thinking.  He  had  made  it  his  business  to  know  what 
women  were  thinking,  and  he  was  wise  enough  not  to 
press  his  advantage.  He  knew  that  the  pursuit  of  women 
is  an  art  rather  akin  to  jujitsu,  that  a  slight  push  will 
cause  them  to  fall  in  virtue  of  their  own  weight,  while  a 
harder  push  will  often  cause  them  to  cling,  and  thus  to 
save  a  fall. 

XXVI 

Monica  thought:  Rochester  is  an  interesting  old  town, 
I  ought  to  know  more  about  it.  So  far,  being  at  work 
from  eight  to  six,  and  craving  fresh  air  as  a  blackbird  in 
a  cage  craves  the  free  heaven,  she  had  taken  no  pains  to 
know  better  the  Dickensian  town.  Now  some  protective 
instinct  suggested  Rochester  as  an  alternative  to  unknown 
satisfactions.  So,  for  two  or  three  nights,  when  the  moon 
was  high  and  brilliant,  she  wandered  about  the  little  town 
that  seems  so  large  because  it  has  embraced  the  strag- 
gling sordidities  of  Chatham.  And  though  she  was  not 
the  enraptured  sightseer  that  she  would  have  herself  be, 


IN  ENGLAND  163 

she  did  find  charm  in  the  High  Street,  its  pot-bellied 
shops,  its  wooden-faced  houses  with  the  overhanging 
roofs.  The  sumptuous  clock-house  of  Sir  Cloudesley 
Shovel,  College  Gate,  and  still  more,  perhaps,  the  old  tile 
roof  and  the  plain  stone  of  St.  Nicholas  and  St.  Clement's, 
which  stands  modestly  by  the  ugliest  of  cathedrals,  bred 
in  her  a  feeling  almost  of  homesickness:  it  was  so  like 
Rye,  but  too  alive. 

Those  long  walks  soothed  her  because  they  tired  her; 
only  they  ended  so  easily  in  the  shadow  that  the  castle 
flung  upon  the  moonlit  pavement.  She  found  herself 
looking  through  the  railings  of  the  Park,  thinking  with  a 
vagueness  that  frightened  her,  as  if  she  were  not  alone. 
Sometimes  she  reviewed  her  life,  a  life  that  would  have 
been  incredible  two  years  before,  a  nine-hour  shift,  coarse 
meals  at  the  factory  canteen,  eightpence  halfpenny  an 
hour,  plus  bonus  —  it  seemed  queer.  To  be  inspected 
medically  every  week;  to  feel  all  right  and  be  told  by  the 
doctor  to  drop  T.  N.  T.  and  turn  over  to  tape-glueing  — 
to  be  a  unit  among  other  units  uniformed  in  life  —  to  have 
the  welfare  people  opening  your  mouth  and  telling  you 
your  gums  looked  white.  She  felt  like  a  fatted  bullock  in 
the  pens  at  Rye  being  poked  in  the  rump  by  a  buyer. 
She  laughed  aloud  as  she  thought  of  the  searcher  who 
passed  her  hands  over  her  and  sometimes  discovered  a 
forbidden  hairpin,  a  searcher  with  fingers  that  saw,  that 
would  strip  you  of  ring,  of  jewelry,  of  buckle,  that  would 
discover  the  point  of  an  exposed  pin,  detect  a  safety-pin 
in  the  very  depths  of  your  apparel. 

"  I  wonder  why  I  do  it,"  she  thought.  "  I  suppose  that 
if  I  didn't  do  that  I'd  do  something  else."  She  remem- 
bered the  pessimistic  remark  of  old  Peels  trying  to  sum 
up  life:  "  You  see,  Miss,  if  it  isn't  toads  it's  bugs." 

But  was  it  always  bugs  or  toads?    Monica  was  of  a 


164  BLIND   ALLEY 

kind  that  looks  upon  self-realisation  as  a  form  of  inde- 
cent exposure,  so  would  not  acknowledge  that  her  con- 
ception of  life  was  not  so  elementary  as  the  gardener's. 
She  decided  to  think  no  more  of  those  secret,  attractive 
dreams.  Then  she  deliberately  conjured  them  up. 

Without  cause,  she  abandoned  the  Maidstone  Road. 
Rather,  she  turned  east,  up  Star  Hill  towards  the  Fort 
Pitt  fields.  There  she  stopped,  in  the  moonlit  wilder- 
ness. She  felt  entirely  alone,  for  no  sound  arose  about 
her,  except  the  murmurs  of  lovers,  and  these  heard  noth- 
ing but  their  own  murmurs. 

"  I  suppose/'  she  said  aloud,  "  people  would  say  I  was 
immoral!  "  Then  her  inner  self  defended  itself:  "  Non- 
sense! what  have  you  done?  Nothing.  He  put  you  in 
charge. of  his  machines;  was  it  your  fault?  He  came  to 
see  how  the  experiments  were  getting  on;  of  course  he 
did.  His  car  broke  down  on  the  Maidstone  Road ;  could 
you  help  it?  "  Monica  acquitted  herself  —  with  a  strong 
recommendation  for  censure.  "  Don't  be  a  hypocrite," 
she  told  herself  suddenly.  "  It  isn't  what  you've  done ; 
it's  what  you've  thought.  You  wouldn't  dare  to  tell 
Father  Lublin,  would  you?  "  Then  Monica  was  over- 
whelmed by  a  feeling  of  sweetest  sin.  She  was  glad  to 
know  that  she  would  not  dare  to  tell  the  old  Monsignor 
how  delightful  had  been  this  chapter  of  accidents.  Evi- 
dently nature  was  no  moralist,  and  if  she,  Monica,  were  a 
moralist,  she  would  go  back  to  Knapenden  next  day. 
"  Look  here,"  she  said  to  herself  again,  "  my  dear  girl,  do 
try  and  realise  he's  married,  to  a  woman  who's  much  bet- 
ter-looking than  you,  and  certainly  better  dressed.  He 
adores  his  children.  That  settles  marriage,  quite  apart 
from  the  fact  that  he  hasn't  suggested  it.  And  any- 
how—it's unthinkable.  But  then?  Why  don't  you  go 
home?  " 


IN  ENGLAND  165 

And  all  Monica  could  answer  was  that  she  wouldn't  go 
home.  She  did  not  know  it,  but  she  was  representative  of 
her  class,  in  that  she  was  not  moral;  she  had  codes,  eti- 
quettes, reservations;  she  had  capacities  for  idiotic  sac- 
rifice, unreasonable  prides  and  shameless  indulgences. 
She  did  things  because  they  were  done,  and  not  because 
they  were  enjoined  upon  her.  Now  she  was  facing  some- 
thing which  was  not  done,  but  between  which  and  her- 
self stood  only  a  traditional  code  without  precise  moral 
penalties.  And  so  the  girl,  arisen  in  a  world  where  re- 
ligion was  formal,  society  as  negligent  in  detection  as  it 
was  severe  in  chastisement,  could  find  only  in  herself  the 
means  to  resist  her  own  desires. 


XXVII 

"  I  SHAN'T  be  back  to  dinner.  I  shall  dine  at  the 
Works." 

"  Oh,"  said  Julia,  looking  up  from  the  Toiler.  She 
looked  lovely,  dark  and  long,  among  the  frothing  laces  of 
her  bedwrap.  "  Must  you,  Frank?  " 

"  Yes,  of  course  I  must.  Do  you  think  I  enjoy  the 
sort  of  dinner  we  get  at  the  Works?  Let  alone  not  see- 
ing you  this  evening,  my  Tea  Rose."  He  bent  down  to 
kiss  her. 

She  looked  at  him  discontentedly.  "  It's  all  very  well, 
Frank,"  she  said,  "  but  I  do  think  you  might  give  the 
Works  a  rest.  Surely  Mr.  Irvine  could  help  you  more 
than  he  does.  What  do  you  want  to  stay  at  the  Works 
for  again?  You  stayed  late  last  night." 

He  felt  uneasy  as  the  dark  eyes  fixed  on  him. 

"  Oh,  well,"  he  said  lightly,  "  it's  war  time,  and  you're 
jolly  lucky  to  have  me  at  all." 


166  BLIND   ALLEY 

She  smiled.  "  Jolly  lucky !  Jolly  lucky !  I  like  your 
conceit.  What  about  your  luck?  " 

"  I  always  know  my  luck,"  he  said  gently  as  he  kissed 
her  again. 

"  What  are  you  going  to  do  between  six  and  dinner 
time?  "  she  asked.  "  You  can't  start  your  beastly  ex- 
periments until  the  night-shift  comes  on,  and  that's  not 
till  eight.  Why  can't  you  come  home  to  dinner?  It's 
only  twenty  minutes'  run  in  the  car." 

"  Oh,  I  can't  stop  to  explain,"  he  said  impatiently. 
"  There,  I've  got  an  awful  lot  to  do  and  I  can't  stop. 
Good-bye."  But  as  he  went  he  heard  Julia  add:  "But 
if  you  leave  at  six  you  can  get  here  by  half-past." 

As  Cottenham  drove  off  and  tried  to  absorb  the  con- 
tents of  the  Times,  he  heard  a  subconscious  self  murmur: 
"  This  is  damned  awkward.  Suspicious ;  damned  suspi- 
cious. She  always  was.  That's  what  comes  of  being 
adored."  He  felt  very  aggrieved.  "  I  do  wish  they 
wouldn't  adore  me.  Women  are  a  nuisance.  Why  can't 
they  just  love  one  and  keep  quiet  until  one's  ready  for 
them?  " 

Then  he  reflected  that  things  were  likely  to  get  much 
more  complicated^  He  acknowledged  to  himself  that  he 
wanted  Monica  to  love  him,  and  it  struck  him  that  if  she 
did,  and  by  degrees  developed  the  characteristics  of  Julia, 
life  would  become  altogether  too  intense.  "  Damn! 
damn!  damn!  "  he  muttered,  "  and  there's  no  stopping  it. 
Anybody  would  think  it  was  my  fault!  " 

All  that  day  the  sense  of  injury  hung  over  him.  He  saw 
the  future  clearly:  Julia  would  get  irritated  because  she 
was  neglected;  she  was  not  used  to  it,  and  he  did  not  want 
her  to  get  used  to  it;  he  had  no  intention  of  neglecting 
her.  Only  if  Julia  was  going  to  work  out  the  time  he 
spent  on  his  dinner  he  supposed  he  would  have  to  bring 


IN   ENGLAND  167 

sworn  statements  from  Miss  Livingstone  to  show  that  he 
had  dined  where  he  said  he  had.  And  this  war,  too! 
Nothing  but  work,  and  no  dodging  it.  Having  to  be  at 
those  beastly  works  all  day  long  —  or  have  the  most  aw- 
ful messes,  rows  with  the  Unions,  misunderstandings  with 
the  Ministry  of  Munitions,  or  floods,  or  —  or  something. 
No,  intrigues  in  war  time  were  no  good.  By  the  time 
evening  came  he  saw  clearly  that  he  could  not  have 
proper  access  to  Monica.  He  might  squeeze  in  about 
three-quarters  of  an  hour  two  or  three  times  a  week. 
Until  Julia  found  out  about  those  three-quarters  of  an 
hour. —  No,  really,  it  wouldn't  do.  But  all  the  same  Cot- 
tenham  dined  at  the  works,  left  the  car  in  the  garage  and 
went  to  Castle  Hill.  He  understood  Monica  well  enough 
to  realise  that  she  would  not  go  to  the  Maidstone  Road, 
because  she  might  think  that  he  would  hope  to  meet  her 
on  the  Maidstone  Road,  and  though,  perhaps,  she  would 
have  been  glad  to  meet  him,  she  certainly  would  not  like 
him  to  think  that  she  threw  herself  in  his  way.  But  if  she 
was  interested  in  him  she  would  probably  go  somewhere 
else  on  the  chance  of  meeting  him  there  accidentally. 
Only  where?  He  was  so  afraid  of  missing  her  that  he 
dared  to  establish  himself  at  the  corner  of  the  Park  gate 
where  the  shadow  fell  thick.  Twice  he  crossed  the  road 
as  a  woman's  figure  came  out  of  a  house  opposite.  In  the 
dark  street  it  was  difficult  to  say  from  which  door  the 
figure  came. 

Then  at  last  he  saw  her.  She  turned  to  the  right,  hes- 
itated for  a  moment  as  if  to  cross  the  bridge,  then  turned 
and  went  up  the  High  Street.  She  could  not  be  going  to 
the  river  side.  Therefore  she  must  be  going  up  Star  Hill. 
He  followed  her  for  a  moment,  carefully,  then  ran  through 
the  lanes  on  the  right,  outstripping  her,  and  after  a  while, 
doubling  back,  reached  the  spot  where  the  fields  began. 


168  BLIND  ALLEY 

His  heart  was  beating.  He  was  afraid.  This  seemed  so 
deliberate.  And  yet,  what  else  could  he  do? 

As  Monica  drew  near  and  suddenly  saw  him  in  the 
shrouded  light  of  a  gas  lamp,  he  realised  that  he  had 
acted  wisely,  for  a  hot  flush  rose  in  her  cheeks  and  he  saw 
that  her  eyes  were  full  of  fear.  He  knew  this  look  of 
fear  in  women's  eyes ;  they  are  so  seldom  afraid  of  any- 
thing but  themselves. 

They  walked  side  by  side  for  a  few  yards;  then,  without 
agreement,  turned  together  into  Fort  Pitt  fields.  The 
earth  was  sun-baked,  and  rasped  under  their  feet.  Still, 
they  said  nothing,  but  walked  quickly.  Then  Cottenham 
thought:  "  I  must  say  something.  I  wonder  what  I  ought 
to  say."  There  was  nothing  to  guide  him  in  his  experi- 
ence, for  holding  that  no  two  women  are  alike,  he  was  of 
those  lovers  who  never  say  the  same  thing  to  two  women. 
But  he  did  know  that  he  must  not  apologise,  express  re- 
gret or  tremor,  because  this  would  awake  regret  or  tremor, 
and  therefore  resentment  against  himself  who  brought 
them  about.  So,  suddenly,  he  said:  "You  are  tall  and 
slim  like  an  ear  of  wheat  in  the  moonlight." 

A  wise  man  talks  of  indifferent  things,  so  that  an  unwise 
woman  may  greatly  desire  that  he  should  talk  of  things 
not  indifferent.  "  It's  queer,"  he  said,  "  somehow,  that 
there  should  still  be  a  moon.  The  world  changes  such  a 
lot,  and  the  moon  doesn't.  It's  one  of  the  things  we  don't 
improve  upon.  After  all,  there  are  various  things  we 
don't  improve  upon;  we  do  invent  telephones,  but  we  don't 
invent  new  ways  of  making  love.  I  suppose  the  old  way's 
always  new.  But  still,  it's  queer.  Here's  the  world  in 
chaos,  having  a  terrific  war  about  autocracy  and  democ- 
racy, and  the  freedom  of  the  seas,  and  all  that  sort  of 
thing  that  wasn't  thought  about  when  mankind  was  pale- 
olithic —  and  when  mankind  was  doing  important  things, 


IN   ENGLAND  169 

eating,  drinking,  making  love.  The  only  thing  we've 
found  out  since  then  is  art.  Art,  love,  and  breakfast, 
that's  all  mankind  needs." 

Monica  looked  at  him  with  a  sidelong  smile.  Art,  love, 
and  breakfast.  How  comprehensive!  But  she  was  not 
yet  ready  to  answer  him,  and  he  knew  it.  So,  as  they 
walked  up  the  hilly  field,  he  enlarged  on  the  incongruity 
of  modern  industrialism.  He  was  not  a  puzzled  man, 
but  a  man  viewing  incomprehensibles,  the  growth  of  cap- 
ital, the  almost  equally  swift  rise  of  labour,  the  shock  of 
their  contact. 

"  I'm  an  employer,"  he  said,  "  and  I  can't  help  being  an 
employer,  any  more  than  I  could  help  being  a  nigger  if 
I  was  born  a  nigger.  If  I  sell  my  business  I'm  a  capitalist, 
an  employer  once  removed.  And  it's  no  good  my  giving 
it  away.  I  can't  become  a  working  man;  the  working 
men  wouldn't  have  me.  I'd  be  like  a  canary  pecked  by 
sparrows.  Well,  what  does  that  mean?  That  means 
conflict,  because,  Cervantes  put  it  very  well,  there  are 
only  two  families  in  the  world,  the  Haves  and  the  Have 
Nots.  I'm  a  paternal  employer;  I  pay  good  wages,  I 
build  cottages,  I  form  clubs,  I  even  have  teeth  filled  — 
and  all  I  do  is  to  strengthen  the  proletariat  so  that  they 
may  fight  me." 

Monica  was  interested.  For  a  moment  she  forgot  his 
pleasant  masculinity.  "  I  don't  see  that,"  she  said. 
"  You're  a  master,  and  there  must  always  be  masters  and 
servants." 

He  shook  his  head.  "  Oh,  no.  That's  the  old  dispen- 
sation. Other  times  are  coming.  Those  below  are  de- 
veloping more  than  strength,  and  that  is  ambition.  It's 
no  more  a  question  of  money,  it's  a  question  of  pride. 
It's  the  natural  rebellion  against  equality  and  —  it  ex- 
presses itself  by  a  demand  for  equality.  In  the  old  days, 


170  BLIND  ALLEY 

the  men  who  couldn't  bear  to  be  equals  became  noble- 
men; to-day  they  become  republicans.  And  every  one  of 
them  intends  to  be  his  neighbour's  president." 

He  talked  for  a  little  time,  Monica  listening  and  now 
and  then  nodding  her  head.  She  did  not  understand  him 
quite,  but  already  she  liked  him  well  enough  to  enjoy  her 
incapacity  to  understand  him.  And  he,  delighting  in  the 
lucidity  which  arose  in  him  through  her  mental  surrender, 
was  delighting  in  self-expression.  He  did  not  think  of 
lovers'  speeches.  He  wanted  to  make  her  understand  his 
vision  of  a  world  like  shifting  sand,  filled  with  rearing 
industries,  vested  interests  like  ancient  oysters  that  have 
grown  beards,  obtrusive  parvenus  that  side  with  the  duke, 
and  then  stab  him,  withered  institutions  like  Cambridge, 
proclaiming  their  rebirth  and  wrapping  themselves  up  in 
a  bed  quilt,  labour,  labour  determined  to  dominate,  and 
disdaining  the  study  of  domination,  impelled  to  cooper- 
ate, and  falling  asunder  in  the  very  act  of  union.  "  That's 
how  we  maintain  ourselves,  we  masters,"  he  said  to  her. 
"  Because  we  are  the  solid  that  remains  in  the  heaving 
crust.  Individuals.  And  it  can't  last.  The  individual 
will  have  to  be  engulfed  by  the  community  before  indi- 
viduality is  realised.  As  for  us,  the  rich  men,  the  cul- 
tured men,  the  dominant  men,  we  are  born,  we  marry, 
we  die,  most  of  us  in  perfect  security,  unaware  of  what  is 
happening  round  us.  And  it's  tragic  to  understand  as  I 
do  that  we  are  only  the  fugitive  masters  of  a  pregnant 
world." 

They  had  reached  the  deserted  hilltop.  For  a  long 
time  they  stood  there  silent,  and  the  woman  in  Monica 
cried  out  for  some  sign  of  personal  interest,  which  she 
might  resent,  but  must  demand.  As  she  stood,  black 
against  the  moonlight,  he  seemed  to  remember.  He  tried 
to  be  light:  "  I  say,  I  must  have  been  boring  you." 


IN   ENGLAND  171 

"  No,"  said  Monica,  faintly  offended. 

"  Do  you  know,  those  were  not  the  sort  of  things  I 
wanted  to  talk  about." 

"  It's  very  late,"  said  Monica,  suddenly  shrinking. 

For  a  second  he  wondered  whether  it  was  better  to  hold 
her  against  her  will,  or  to  indulge  her  against  her  instinct. 
Then  he  decided  to  let  her  go,  leaving  everything  unsaid. 
Its  implications  would  be  more  powerful.  At  the  bottom 
he  stopped,  and  for  a  moment  they  looked  into  each 
other's  eyes  that  shone.  She  looked  radiant  and  un- 
happy. He  thought:  "Oh,  why  can't  I  let  her  alone!" 
and  at  the  same  time  took  her  hand  that  trembled,  turned 
it  palm  upwards  and  pressed  a  kiss  into  its  hollow. 

XXVIII 

MONICA  had  been  allowed  to  go  home  on  Friday  night. 
On  Saturday  morning,  at  about  eleven  o'clock,  Westcott 
called  her  to  the  telephone.  The  voice  was  far  away 
and  very  faint  —  her  fingers  clenched  over  the  receiver. 
Then  she  steadied  her  voice:  "Yes,  er  —  I  can't  hear." 

Then  at  last  Cottenham's  voice  grew  clear:  "  I  thought 
you'd  like  to  know:  the  British  offensive  began  at  six 
o'clock  this  morning." 

The  offensive !  A  frightful  excitement  arose  in  Monica. 
She  felt  ashamed  because  filled  with  so  much  joy.  At 
last  this  thing  had  come  which  had  hung  over  them  so 
long.  It  was  like  the  delight  of  death,  deferred  by  pain, 
of  one  whom  one  loves. 

"  It's  on  the  Somme,"  said  Cottenham. 

"Oh,"  said  Monica,  "the  Somme.  Where's  the 
Somme?  " 

"  Rather  difficult  to  explain  over  the  telephone.  You 
might  say  the  middle  is  round  about  Albert." 


172  BLIND  ALLEY 

Cottenham  did  not  understand  at  first.  He  heard 
Monica  cry  out  "Stephen!"  and  then,  with  a  note  of 
injury,  almost  of  anger:  "  He  said  there  was  nothing  do- 
ing there.  Oh,  I  can't  bear  it!  " 

The  faint  voice  said:  "  Oh,  yes,  you  can,  you  can,  my 
angel,  my  darling.  We'll  bear  it  together." 


BOOK  TWO 
AMONG  THE  YAHOOS 


Ah!  mon  colon! 

Ah!  c'que  c^est  long! 

Ce  sacre  chemin, 

On  n'en  voit  pas  la  fin. 

Le  General, 

Y  va-t-a  cheval, 

Et  le  troupier 

Y  va  toujours  a  pied. 

.    (French  marching  song.) 


BOOK  TWO 

AMONG  THE  YAHOOS 
I 

A  CERTAIN  discontent  had  invaded  Sir  Hugh  in  these 
two  months.  Things  were  going  well  enough,  but  not 
as  well  as  he  had  come  to  hope.  Steadily,  every  five  or 
six  days,  there  was  a  push  at  some  point  on  the  Somme; 
little  places  like  Fricourt,  like  Trones  Wood,  were  sud- 
denly crowned  with  importance  by  the  newspapers,  and 
a  wobbly,  black  line  showed  progress  on  the  large-scale 
maps.  Unfortunately,  Sir  Hugh  was  one  of  those  people 
who  like  the  truth  better  than  exultation;  so  he  also 
looked  at  the  small  scale  maps,  and  he  could  not  deny 
that  on  those  the  wobbly  line  hardly  went  forward  at 
all.  Yes,  he  knew;  Belloc,  Colonel  Maude,  and  their 
tribe  were  continually  educating  him  in  the  difficulties  of 
breaking  through,  persuading  him  that  every  yard  now 
was  worth  ten  yards  once  upon  a  time,  and  resolutely 
cheering  him  up  when  we  did  not  advance  by  telling  him 
it  was  all  right  if  only  we  killed  Germans.  It  annoyed 
him  rather  that  the  newspapers  should  also  assume  that 
in  so  doing  we  were  killing  no  Englishmen;  it  also  an- 
noyed him  to  be  told  that  when  the  Germans  attacked 
and  succeeded,  they  were  wiped  out,  while  when  we 
attacked  and  succeeded,  somehow  or  other  hardly  any- 
body was  killed.  This  seemed  to  clash  with  the  Roll 
of  Honour. 

It  was  not  that  he  lacked  faith  in  the  ultimate  issue, 


176  BLIND  ALLEY 

for  in  that  month  of  July,  1916,  his  attention  was  drawn 
to  strange  corners  of  Europe,  to  other  wobbly  lines  on 
the  Isonzo,  in  Poland,  where  the  Russians  were  breaking 
through  at  Lutsk,  pounding  Austria,  capturing  hundreds 
of  thousands  of  prisoners,  while  the  Italians  were  magi- 
cally scaling  giant  hills,  and  even  entering  Gorizia,  a 
town.  Only  it  all  seemed  so  slow  and  so  far.  Russia, 
no  doubt,  was  the  steam-roller,  but  a  steam-roller  was 
not  a  swift  method  of  locomotion. 

Other  irritants  conspired  to  disturb  him,  the  sinking 
of  the  Nottingham  and  the  Falmouth  by  U-boats,  which 
he  vaguely  felt  was  not  sportsmanlike.  And  he  was  con- 
scious of  predominant  cant,  such  as  the  hubbub  that  was 
raised  when  Captain  Fryatt  was  shot  for  trying  to  ram 
U-33.  The  disturbance  seemed  to  Sir  Hugh  as  sentimen- 
tal and  unsustained  by  evidence  as  the  clamour  over  the 
execution  of  Nurse  Cavell.  As  he  saw  it  Nurse  Cavell 
and  Captain  Fryatt  were  civilians  who  had  done  their 
best  for  their  country,  in  the  one  case  by  favouring  the 
escape  of  Allied  soldiers,  in  the  other  by  trying  to  ram 
an  enemy  torpedo  boat.  They  had  been  quite  right; 
they  had  been  heroic,  but  from  the  German  point  of  view 
they  were  nuisances  and  dangers,  and  it  was  worth  while 
to  strike  terror  into  possible  imitators.  At  bottom  Sir 
Hugh  was  not  prepared  to  examine  evidence ;  the  doctrine 
of  frightf ulness  seemed  to  him  sensible ;  it  did  not  matter 
very  much  whether  one  killed  soldiers  or  civilians,  or 
for  what  reason  one  did  it:  war  consisted  in  killing  as 
many  enemies  as  possible,  and  in  these  days  when  every- 
body was  doing  some  service  to  the  nation,  everybody, 
whether  male  or  female,  old  or  young,  had  a  place  in  the 
firing  line.  The  rules  of  war,  when  he  freed  himself,  as 
he  often  did  now,  from  the  codes  of  an  English  gentle- 
man, struck  him  as  nonsense.  One  might  as  well  have 


AMONG  THE  YAHOOS  177 

had  rules  for  murderers,  or  rules  for  burglars.  The  pre- 
tence that  war  was  a  tragic  form  of  cricket  struck  him 
as  puerile. 

He  tried  to  express  this  once  at  his  club  by  putting 
forward  that  the  ideal  was  to  hang  every  German  — 
man,  woman,  and  child.  This  was  greeted  with  loud 
approval,  but  the  members  recognised  only  difference 
between  this  proposal  and  the  execution  of  Belgian 
civilians. 

"  I  suppose,"  he  thought,  "  that  I  expect  too  much. 
If  people  reasoned  things  out  and  thought  logically  there 
might  be  no  war.  Perhaps  there  is  war  only  because 
they  think  so  passionately.  In  war  time  two  and  two 
are  five.  We  might  breed  no  heroes  if  we  bred  no  idiots." 

Yet  he  passionately  desired  victory.  He  had  a  mo- 
ment of  the  purest  joy  at  the  end  of  August  when  Rou- 
mania  came  in,  when  Charles  Oakley  at  last  used  the 
little  flags  which  he  had  been  keeping  for  so  many 
months,  taking  them  out  longingly  every  time  Mr. 
Jonescu  flung  the  hat  of  the  nation  at  the  feet  of  the 
Hohenzollern.  He  liked  to  picture  the  swarms  of  Rou- 
manian cavalry  streaming  through  the  Transylvanian 
passes  into  the  Hungarian  Plain. 

But  it  all  seemed  very  long.  It  was  all  right,  of  course. 
In  those  days  there  were  only  two  kinds  of  people,  those 
who  said  it  was  slow  but  sure,  and  those  who  said  it  was 
sure  but  slow.  He  wondered  whether  it  would  be  over 
by  Christmas.  About  the  end  of  July,  for  the  first  time, 
Knapenden  faintly  heard  the  guns. 

II 

ALL  through  the  week-end  Monica  found  herself  the 
painful  battlefield  of  two  warring  preoccupations.  One 


178  BLIND   ALLEY 

she  thrust  aside  as  best  she  could;  she  tried  to  think  only 
of  Stephen,  to  make  mental  pictures  of  her  brother  out 
there,  in  that  place  which  the  map  did  not  evoke,  lost 
in  a  region  which  words  such  as  the  Somme,  Albert, 
Bapaume,  did  not  make  eloquent.  She  painted  little  pic- 
tures of  him,  dreadful  little  pictures  of  long,  thin,  boyish 
Stephen,  flattened  against  the  muddy  side  of  a  trench, 
crouching  on  the  fire  step,  peering  cautiously  with  large, 
strained  eyes  into  a  periscope  —  and  the  line  of  Sussex 
Coast  men,  men  of  Brede  and  Udimore,  brown  and  slow, 
fishermen  from  Rye,  shopboys  from  Hastings,  white  boys 
with  sharp  noses  and  frightened  eyes  —  a  crowded, 
shrinking  line  from  which  protruded  a  tragic  motif,  like 
the  lances  in  Velasquez's  "  Surrender  of  Breda  ",  black 
rifles,  each  one  tipped  with  lightning  by  its  bayonet. 

It  haunted  her,  this  picture  of  stormy  rest,  and  men, 
earth-men,  earth-brown,  so  many  inevitably  doomed, 
ashes  to  ashes,  earth  to  earth.  .  .  . 

And  her  imagination  burgeoned  into  apocalyptic 
dreams,  smoke,  black  smoke,  fire  stained  as  with  blood, 
and  craters  yawning  open  and  retching  red  clay.  .  .  . 

Then  Cottenham's  message  materialised  in  her  brain, 
that  retracted  like  a  freezing  spider:  she  no  longer  saw 
the  brown  line  cluster  in  safety.  The  British  offensive 
had  begun  —  she  knotted  her  hands  on  her  breast  as  she 
saw  it  begin,  as  she  heard  the  whistles  when  "  zero  " 
came,  when  through  the  nightmare  grimness  of  the  dawn 
she  saw  the  brown  line  leap  out  into  that  blood-clotted 
smoke,  float  in  it  like  shades,  then  vanish  like  shades  in 
a  Stygian  dream,  save  a  few  who  became  suddenly  solid, 
as  on  the  edge  of  the  trench  for  a  moment  they  swayed 
and  then  crumpled  heavily.  .  .  . 

It  was  madness.  She  was  not  used  to  it  yet.  Death 
was  not  commonplace.  It  was  not  yet  ordinary  to  stand 


AMONG  THE  YAHOOS  179 

as  she  did  for  an  hour  on  the  hill  to  the  east  of  Rye  from 
which  all  the  time  she  could  hear,  softly,  the  muffled 
guns,  sounds  that  fell,  gentle  and  regular,  like  the  foot- 
falls of  a  giant  upon  sand.  .  .  . 

All  the  time  she  was  thinking  of  Cottenham,  thinking 
of  him  with  abominable  self -contempt,  thrust  from  her 
the  vile  idea  that  even  now,  when  Stephen  might  die,  she 
could  still  think  of  Cottenham,  collect  those  few  words 
of  love  and  hold  them  close  as  a  scapular,  make  of  them 
a  recipe  for  peace  in  a  world  that  was  all  war.  "  A  man 
loves  me,"  she  thought,  "  and  it  matters  so  much.  Oh, 
I'm  beastly!  "  She  thought  that  she  should  ache  like  a 
large  wound,  because  of  all  those  who,  that  minute,  were 
dying,  whom  she  could  see  die,  and  yet  gladness  cried 
out  in  her.  She  feared  to  be  alone.  Through  the  Sun- 
day she  was  not  alone;  she  had  Louise.  But  Louise 
irritated  her:  while  the  world  dissolved  in  blood  Louise 
went  on  knitting.  When  attacked,  she  said:  "  Well,  Ste- 
phen wants  socks.  Somebody  must  knit  them." 

The  tragic  part  of  it  was  that  Louise  was  right:  if 
ever  the  world,  on  the  eve  of  judgment  day,  comes  to 
Armageddon,  men  will  still  want  socks.  So  Louise  went 
on  knitting,  sweet  and  serene.  She  finished  her  pair  of 
socks  and  began  a  muffler. 

From  Lady  Oakley  Monica  fled.  Lady  Oakley  had 
become  completely  Valkyrian;  she  was  riding  the  storm, 
but  unfortunately  she  rode  it  in  every  room.  Monica 
carried  away  to  Rochester  an  unforgettable  vision  of  her 
mother  rushing  into  the  study,  where  Sir  Hugh  was  walk- 
ing up  and  down,  nursing  a  large  and  crumpled  Kalli- 
krates,  and  rubbing  his  face  on  the  cat's  soft  shoulder. 
Lady  Oakley  was  waving  the  Observer:  "  Hugh !  Hugh  I 
we've  broken  through.  We've  taken  their  first  lines  to 
a  depth  of  three-quarters  of  a  mile  on  a  five-mile  front! 


180  BLIND  ALLEY 

Oh!  isn't  it  splendid  to  be  alive  in  these  days!  If  only 
one  could  do  something  oneself.  Why  didn't  they  come 
and  drop  bombs  on  us,  at  least.  Oh,  for  heaven's  sake 
put  that  cat  down!  Let  me  see  the  map.  Hugh,  don't 
you  hear,  I  want  the  map." 

Yes,  Lady  Oakley  was  very  tiring.  Nor  did  her  father 
help  her  much.  Neither  said  a  word  about  it,  but  they 
thought  a  great  deal  of  Stephen.  In  the  end  Sir  Hugh 
did  refer  to  him  inf erentially : 

"  Hang  it  all!     Everybody  doesn't  get  killed!  " 

Monica  knew  what  this  irritable  remark  conveyed,  put 
her  arm  round  his  neck,  rested  her  cheek  upon  his  shoul- 
der, and  so  they  stayed  for  a  long  time,  her  father  staring 
into  the  air  which  he  peopled  with  shades.  But  as  she 
sat  with  the  father  whom  she  adored,  a  pleasant  picture, 
the  three  of  them,  he,  thin  and  fine,  the  girl  red-crowned, 
and  on  his  lap  the  great  cat,  his  sumptuous  belly  of  golden 
fur  voluptuously  upturned  to  caressing  hands,  she  found 
herself  invaded  by  another  meditation:  "What  is  going 
to  happen  now?  What  shall  I  do  to-morrow  when  I 
meet  him?  Will  he  say  face  to  face  the  things  he  said 
over  the  telephone?  And  then,  what  shall  I  say?  I 
ought  not  to  go  back."  She  was  horribly  afraid  to  go 
back,  and  yet  knew  she  must.  His  peril  made  it  as 
necessary  that  she  should  go  back,  as  the  war  had 
made  it  necessary  for  Stephen  to  go  out  there.  The 
public  version  was  that  Stephen  had  gone  out  to  defend 
his  country's  cause,  and  no  doubt  that  had  something  to 
do  with  it,  but  Stephen  would  have  refused  to  do  that; 
what  he  could  not  refuse  as  an  Oakley  was  to  affront 
danger.  Now  she  too  was  in  danger,  and  it  was  neces- 
sary that  she  should  face  it. 

The  calmer  air  of  the  Cottenham  Works  restored  her 
for  a  moment.  In  the  train  it  had  struck  her  that  Cot- 


AMONG  THE  YAHOOS  181 

tenham  might  be  on  the  platform  when  she  arrived. 
That  was  frightening.  But  she  did  not  see  him,  and 
this  vaguely  annoyed  her;  she  felt  that  she  had  been 
frightened  on  false  pretences.  All  the  morning  she  ex- 
pected him  to  come  in  suddenly,  as  he  often  did,  alert 
and  bright-eyed,  creating  among  the  girls  the  pleasant 
agitation  of  healthy  masculinity.  Of  course  he  would 
take  her  behind  the  shield  to  look  at  the  chart.  What 
would  he  do  then?  She  shrank  from  the  idea  of  words 
of  love,  probably  caresses.  But  he  did  not  come ;  it  was 
a  relief  that  he  did  not  come,  and  a  humiliation.  She 
did  not  tell  herself  that  Cottenham  might  know  that  she 
expected  him,  and  wilfully  disappoint  her.  The  day  was 
full  of  irritations.  It  began  almost  at  once  by  a  misun- 
derstanding with  Ivy  Badger.  Monica  pointed  out  that 
as  the  machine  was  still  a  bad  choker  she  should  not 
overload  it  with  T.  N.  T.  powder,  but  fill  the  hopper 
progressively  in  moderate  quantities.  To  this  Ivy 
Badger  replied:  "  Impossossible." 

"  Of  course  it's  possible,"  said  Monica.  "  Put  in  about 
half-a-pound  at  a  time." 

"  Impossossible,"  said  Ivy  contentedly. 

Monica  made  an  effort  to  seem  lofty;  she  remembered 
when  she  was  the  charge  hand. 

"  Miss  Badger,"  she  said,  "  couldn't  you  say  some- 
thing else?  " 

"  Impossossible,"  replied  Ivy,  and  put  the  scoop  in  her 
pocket.  Monica  clenched  her  fists.  She  began  to  under- 
stand why  Muriel  Penn  had,  not  long  ago,  hit  Ivy  Badger 
in  the  eye.  She  informed  Ivy  that  she  would  be  reported 
to  unit  and  presumably  suspended,  then  retired,  nearly 
screaming  with  rage  because  Ivy  calmly  remarked  that 
this  also  was  "  Impossossible."  Late  in  the  afternoon, 
when  Monica  had  begun  to  hope  that  Cottenham  would 


182  BLIND  ALLEY 

come  neither  that  day  nor  ever  again,  Miss  Livingstone 
called  her  to  the  door  with  an  air  of  mystery.  Miss  Liv- 
ingstone was  looking  more  saintly  and  emaciated  than 
ever. 

"  Oh,  Miss  Oakley,"  she  said,  "  I  just  wanted  to  see  you 
for  a  moment.  Of  course  it's  a  very  difficult  subject  to 
talk  about." 

"  Yes?  " 

"  Well,  I  wanted  to  speak  to  you  about  Rose  Har- 
losh."  (Oh,  this  was  very  awkward.) 

"  What  has  she  done?  "  Monica's  nerves  were  so  raw 
that  she  could  not  help  being  blunt. 

"  Oh  —  done.  She  hasn't  done  anything.  But  still 
one  has  to  be  careful  in  a  factory  where  there  are  so 
many  girls  and  so  many  men.  That's  the  whole  idea  of 
welfare  work." 

"  But  what  has  Miss  Harlosh  done?  "  asked  Monica 
rather  sharply.  Miss  Livingstone  revealed  by  degrees, 
all  of  them  full  of  maidenly  delicacy,  that  one  of  the 
military  guard  (such  a  nice  man,  grey-haired  and  a 
married  man)  had  been  noticed  by  her  patrolling  exclu- 
sively the  strip  of  wire  that  ran  along  this  shop.  Miss 
Livingstone  had  thought  it  right  to  do  likewise.  In  a 
factory  where  so  many  men  and  so-  many  girls  were 
employed  —  surely  Miss  Oakley  would  understand.  Yes, 
Miss  Harlosh's  bench  was  near  the  window.  Oh,  of 
course,  young  girls  smiled  and  giggled  at  nothing,  but 
still,  Miss  Oakley  would  understand.  .  .  . 

It  went  on  for  a  long  time,  and  what  enraged  Monica 
so  was  that  the  Welfare  Inspector  made  no  charge 
against  Rose  Harlosh,  nor  against  the  military  guard, 
but  by  the  time  she  had  done  with  them,  it  was  quite 
clear  that  they  had  somehow  done  something  to  which 
nothing  could  give  a  name. 


AMONG  THE  YAHOOS  183 

"  I  hate  her,  I  hate  her,"  thought  Monica.  Monica  was 
not  genteel.  These  accumulated  irritants  rested  heavily 
upon  her  that  evening  as  she  sat  by  the  lamp  and  cut 
out  a  blouse  likely  to  be  even  more  ill-fitting  than  her 
average.  She  realised  simultaneously  that  one  arm 
would  turn  out  longer  than  the  other,  and  that  her  prob- 
able entanglement  with  Cottenham  was  likely  to  make 
trouble  for  her.  "  What's  going  to  happen?  "  she  thought. 
Then:  "What  shall  I  do?"  She  found  no  answer  to 
either  question.  Did  she  love  him?  No,  of  course  not. 
But  if  she  told  herself:  "  I  do  not  love  him,"  she  knew 
that  would  be  untrue.  She  did  not  understand  her  con- 
dition, one  of  neither  passion  nor  coldness,  but  a  state 
where  love  can  ignite  at  another  flame,  or  fade  if  that 
flame  is  withdrawn.  She  realised  that  all  this  was  full 
of  risks,  likely  to  lead  to  exposure,  to  difficulty,  to  vain 
hungers,  to  horrid  satiations;  to  secrecies  and  shames, 
and  if  resisted,  to  incredible  emptiness.  But  then,  should 
she  go  home?  or  should  she  frankly  draw  him  closer? 
She  found  that  she  could  do  neither.  "  I  suppose  I  must 
drift,"  she  thought,  and  in  so  saying  did  not  realise  that 
she  was  taking  a  woman's  only  course,  for  that  course 
fills  woman  with  the  belief  that  the  good  things  which 
happen  to  her  are  providential,  while  the  evil  things  are 
merely  unfortunate.  Like  most  women,  she  was  pre- 
paring to  drift  —  up-stream. 

Ill 

CRADOC  raised  his  eyes  from  the  book  which  lay  upon 
his  knees  and  looked  up  to  the  little  square  of  brilliant 
sky  framed  between  the  bars  of  his  cell.  It  was  a  lovely 
little  square  of  sky,  and  once,  for  a  long  time,  a  hawk 
had  hovered  in  it,  a  black  dot,  rapt  with  its  own  move- 


184  BLIND  ALLEY 

ment  as  it  hung  over  the  canals  and  dykes  of  Roberts- 
bridge.  It  was  strange,  he  thought,  that  he  should  not 
be  unhappy  in  prison.  He  had  now  been  three  months 
in  Robertsbridge  gaol,  having  refused  to  put  on  his  uni- 
form when  summoned,  and  sentenced  to  six  months' 
detention;  he  had  been  transferred  to  the  civil  prison, 
he  did  not  know  why.  Here  he  was  removed  from  the 
turmoil  of  the  life  surrounding,  that  had  seemed  every 
day  to  grow  shriller  and  more  vulgar  as  hatred  developed 
among  men.  He  had  a  sustained  sense  of  sacrifice;  he 
was  suffering  for  a  principle,  and  he  never  told  himself 
that  in  so  doing  he  joyously  gratified  his  vanity.  "  I 
am  in  prison,"  he  thought,  and  even  after  three  months 
this  idea  filled  him  with  a  sense  of  mystic  and  theatrical 
performance.  He  wondered  what  would  happen  next. 
In  three  months  he  would  be  handed  over,  he  supposed, 
once  more  to  be  posted  to  some  depot  where  the  old  non- 
coms  would  be  rather  rude,  the  old  soldiers  rather  envious 
because  he  was  getting  out  of  the  beastly  job,  and  the 
young  soldiers  on  the  whole  rather  wishing  they  had  the 
guts  to  do  it  too.  Then  he  would  appear  before  a  decent 
crowd  of  officers,  attempting  to  try  him  justly  by  means 
of  an  unjust  law.  And  he  would  state  his  case  again. 
And  they  would  listen  to  him  again  as  they  had  listened 
before,  politely,  and  would  try  to  find  extenuating  cir- 
cumstances, and  would  fail,  and  would  sentence  him 
again.  And  he  would  come  back  again.  And  after 
another  six  months  or  a  year  it  would  all  begin  over 
again.  It  enraged  him  suddenly:  once  upon  a  time  con- 
scientious objectors  were  stoned;  stone  walls  were  a 
slower  process.  Then,  realising  there  were  still  three 
months  to  come,  he  returned  to  his  book,  one  of  the  best 
books  in  the  world,  he  thought,  the  Bible.  Cradoc  had 
made  an  excellent  impression  on  the  chaplain  by  con- 


AMONG  THE  YAHOOS  185 

tinually  reading  the  Bible;  following  his  usual  policy, 
which  was  to  avoid  talking  to  the  clergy,  because  it  was 
not  fair  to  expect  them  to  understand  anything,  he  had 
not  told  the  chaplain  that  the  Bible  was  a  literary  monu- 
ment. That  certainly  would  have  offended  the  chap- 
lain. 

Footsteps  sounded  in  the  corridor,  and  a  flicker  of  in- 
terest arose  in  Cradoc.  In  gaol  footsteps  are  interesting, 
and  there  is  variety  in  the  smoke  the  wind  carries  beyond 
the  bars,  in  the  spider  that  spins  its  web.  The  footsteps 
stopped  before  his  door,  and  as  it  clanked  open  to  let  in 
the  doctor,  Cradoc  grew  feverish  with  excitement.  The 
doctor  was  a  little  man  with  a  sharp,  scrubby  beard  and 
a  nose  pinched  in  the  middle,  spreading  to  the  tip.  A 
bluff,  sharp  little  man,  who  handled  men's  insides  with 
the  skill  of  an  engineer  handling  the  parts  of  a  dynamo. 

"  Well,"  he  said,  "  let's  have  a  look  at  you."  He  went 
over  the  prisoner  rapidly,  without  making  him  strip. 
"  You're  all  right."  Then,  without  need,  he  added:  "We'll 
post  you  back  to  the  work-room  to-morrow;  I  suppose 
you  won't  be  sorry." 

"  No,"  said  Cradoc,  "  I'll  be  an  expert  shoemaker  by 
the  time  I've  served  my  term.  I'll  be  fit  to  lecture  on 
shoemaking  before  this  war's  done." 

The  doctor  smiled.  "  Oh,  so  you  expect  to  come  back, 
do  you?  " 

"  Yes,"  said  Cradoc  rather  wearily,  for  the  picture  of 
soft,  fair-haired  Molly  Hart  had  passed  through  his 
mind.  "  I'll  be  coming  back." 

The  doctor  looked  at  him  for  a  moment,  as  if  hesitating. 
He  felt  that  he  had  no  further  business  with  the  prisoner. 
The  man  had  been  in  the  infirmary,  was  now  fit  to  resume 
labour;  that  was  the  end  of  it.  But  he  was  interested  in 
this  quiet,  self-engrossed  prisoner.  Also,  the  doctor  being 


186  BLIND   ALLEY 

Scotch,  had  been  educated  and  found  intellectual  interest 
in  the  South  rather  scanty.  So  he  stayed. 

"  Won't  you  ever  get  sick  of  it?  "  he  asked.  "  Don't 
you  think  you'll  be  changing  your  mind  before  you're  up 
for  another  court  martial?  " 

"  You  mean  join  up?  "  said  Cradoc. 

"  Yes.    This  isn't  half  a  life  for  a  young  man." 

"  It  can't  be  helped,"  said  Cradoc.  "  It's  not  my  fault 
if  I  think  as  I  do." 

"  Oh,  nonsense,"  said  the  doctor.  "  You  aren't  going  to 
invoke  determinism,  are  you?  " 

"  I  am  not,"  said  Cradoc,  "  for  one  thing  I  don't  know 
what  it  means,  but  if  you  mean  that  I  think  I  must  act 
according  to  what  I  think  right,  and  that  I  must  give  the 
example  by  suffering  for  what  I  think  right,  then  I  do 
invoke  it.  What  I  have  done  I  must  do  again." 

"  And  what  will  happen  if  the  war  goes  on  for  five 
years?  " 

"  I  shall  be  imprisoned  for  five  years.  I  shall  not  be 
the  first  who  has.  And  many  men  must  suffer  as  I  do 
before  this  society,  presided  over  by  the  aristocrat,  ex- 
ploited by  the  capitalist,  and  gulled  by  the  priest,  is 
blown  sky  high  by  a  proletariat  which  will  not  always 
be  imbecile." 

"  Do  you  know,"  said  the  doctor,  "  you  socialists,  and 
conscientious  objectors,  and  all  that,  you're  drunkards  in 
a  way.  I  come  across  a  good  many  drunkards  in  my 
work,  all  sorts ;  not  only  men  who  can't  keep  off  the  drink, 
but  people  who  go  in  for  drugs,  women  who  are  dotty  on 
clothes;  monomaniacs  of  all  sorts.  Well,  you  people,  you 
seem  to  me  to  get  drunk  on  ideas;  you  get  sodden  with 
them  at  last." 

Cradoc  smiled.  "  Well,"  he  said,  "  the  bourgeoisie  has 
not  always  been  abstemious,  but  I  realise,  Doctor,  that 


AMONG  THE  YAHOOS  187 

this  is   a   form  of  debauchery  they  don't  go  in  for." 

The  little  Scotchman  twinkled.  He  loved  a  spar,  and 
in  the  South  he  missed  those  long  evenings  with  brother 
Scotch  students  when,  after  a  great  deal  of  whisky,  the 
characteristics  of  women  and  the  rival  claims  of  the 
Wee  Kirk  and  the  Free  Kirk  were  so  violently  dis- 
cussed. 

"  Well,  well,"  he  said,  "  perhaps  they  don't,  and  it's 
quite  as  well.  Maybe  an  idea  is  only  a  morbid  secre- 
tion of  the  intellect." 

"  Such  as  patriotism,"  suggested  Cradoc. 

"  Patriotism  isn't  an  idea.    It's  an  instinct." 

"  Oh,  hate  thy  neighbor  as  thyself,  and  with  equally 
good  reason." 

"  You're  too  clever  for  me,"  said  the  doctor.  "  I  look 
at  these  things  simply.  Here  we  are  at  war;  you  and  I 
had  little  to  do  with  the  making  of  it,  and  we've  every- 
thing to  do  with  the  bearing  of  it.  We  couldn't  help  it, 
but  our  country's  gone  to  war.  Isn't  it  the  natural  thing 
—  the  instinctive  thing  —  to  fight  for  it?  " 

"  It  may  be  the  instinctive  thing,"  said  Cradoc,  "  but  if 
so  it's  a  bad  instinct.  The  word  l  country  '  means  noth- 
ing. Once  upon  a  time,  in  this  island,  Wessex  was  fight- 
ing Mercia,  each  one  for  their  own  country.  Then  one  of 
them  gobbled  the  other  up  and  made  England.  Thon 
England  fought  Scotland,  each  one  patriotic  for  their  own 
country.  Then  one  gobbled  the  other  up  and  made  Brit- 
ain. Then  Britain,  and  India,  and  the  Transvaal,  and 
Egypt  fought  each  other,  each  one  patriotic  for  its  own 
country;  then  England  gobbled  up  the  lot  and  made  the 
British  Empire.  Would  you  like  to  carry  it  the  other 
way,  Doctor?  If  Sussex  were  really  patriotic  it  would 
fight  Kent.  If  Winchelsea  were  really  patriotic  it  would 
fight  Rye  —  until  we  got  street  fighting  street,  and  house 


188  BLIND  ALLEY 

fighting  house.  For,  mind  you,  it  always  comes  to  fight- 
ing; without  fighting  there  is  no  patriotism." 

"  Well,"  said  the  doctor,  "  and  what  does  this  histori- 
cal lecture  amount  to?  " 

"  It  amounts  to  this,  that  the  words  '  my  country  ' 
mean  nothing,  that  when  you  have  converted  another 
country  to  adopt  your  —  culture  by  the  simple  process  of 
killing  most  of  its  inhabitants  you  have  merely  extended 
the  area  of  patriotism.  You  shove  your  frontiers  to  and 
fro,  but  you  don't  alter  the  colour  of  a  leaf  on  a  tree. 
And  if,  then,  the  word  '  country  '  is  so  elastic  that  to-day 
you  include  among  our  patriotic  brothers  the  Boers,  who, 
you  can  look  it  up  in  the  papers,  were  in  1901  a  race  of 
coarse  degenerates,  you  are  asking  me  to  fight  for  some- 
thing false."  / 

"But,  good  heavens!  man!"  cried  the  doctor  impa- 
tiently, "  don't  talk  to  me  as  if  I  didn't  know  these  things. 
Your  country  isn't  just  an  area  between  frontiers;  I  know 
as  well  as  you  that  frontiers  shift  about;  when  one  says 
1  your  country '  one  means  a  certain  kind  of  culture,  a 
certain  kind  of  education,  of  impulse." 

"  Aren't  those  things  superficial?  " 

"  No,  I  don't  think  so." 

"  Then,  how  is  it  that  we  are  so  sympathetic  to-day  to 
the  culture  of  the  French  who,  at  the  time  of  Fashoda 
were,  according  to  our  newspapers,  to  be  rolled  in  mud 
and  blood?  Why  are  we  so  hostile  to  the  German  cul- 
ture which,  via  the  royal  family  and  its  court,  dominated 
English  social  life  from  1815  to  the  seventies?  " 

The  little  doctor  wriggled.  "  Oh,  well,  there  are  po- 
litical necessities." 

"  And  are  there  no  human  necessities?  " 

"  You  know,"  said  the  doctor,  "  you  people  look  at 
things  in  such  a  queer  way.  You  socialists  are  so  damned 


AMONG  THE  YAHOOS  189 

individualistic,  so  unsociable.  You  seem  to  have  no  feel- 
ing of  community.  There's  more  real  socialism  in  a 
platoon  of  the  Sussex  Coast  all  dying  together." 

"They  find  it  easier  than  living  together,  don't  they? 
I  suppose  that  the  instinct  of  man  is  to  slay.  But  what 
are  we  for,  I  ask  you,  doctor,  except  to  repress  instincts? 
What  is  civilisation  for  except  to  keep  down  instincts? 
To  get  rid  of  that  filthy  old  muddler  whom  they  call  Na- 
ture! The  thing  that  can't  make  a  swamp  without 
malaria,  the  author  of  the  bug  and  the  caterpillar,  the 
creature  that  protects  the  pregnant  mother  against  dis- 
ease, and  lets  her  sicken  and  die  when  her  child  is  growing 
up.  Yes,  it's  natural  to  thieve,  and  to  rape,  and  to  kill, 
and  it's  natural  to  lie  and  to  flatter  —  but  it's  our  job  to 
keep  Nature  down.  So,  instead  of  indulging  Nature,  the 
beastly  thing  that  likes  to  use  our  blood  to  manure  soil 
where  she  can  grow  weeds,  it's  our  job  to  knock  Nature 
out.  Nature  doesn't  know  how  to  get  a  child  born  with- 
out pain,  and  she's  had  to  invent  a  thousand  cruel  dis- 
eases to  muddle  us  out  of  the  world  after  muddling  us  in. 
So  don't  tell  me  that  because  Nature  has  implanted  in  us 
an  abominable  vanity,  told  us  to  believe  that  it's  better 
to  be  an  Englishman  than  a  German,  an  Englishman  than 
a  Scotchman,  a  Sussex  man  than  a  man  of  Kent,  don't 
tell  me  we've  got  to  abet  her,  and  keep  it  up  by  killing  as 
many  of  the  other  lot  as  we  can,  until  they're  ready  to 
take  their  revenge  on  us." 

"  Well,  well,"  said  the  doctor  amiably,  "  these  are  hard 
words.  Let  me  tell  you  as  a  medical  man  that  Nature  is 
not  such  an  old  fool  as  all  that.  Christians  will  tell  you 
that  the  troubles  of  the  world  are  crosses  which  must  be 
borne.  I  tell  you  that  they  are  a  way  of  sorting  out  the 
strong  and  breeding  a  finer  race.  Disease  knocks  out 
the  weak." 


190  BLIND   ALLEY 

"  They  breed  before  they're  knocked  out." 

"  Yes,  but  many  die  at  birth." 

"  I'm  afraid  they  don't.  Lunatics,  consumptives,  the 
feeble-minded,  all  those  people  are  increasing." 

"  Oh,  no.  Not  as  fast  as  the  population.  You  see, 
science  has  improved  conditions." 

"  Ah,"  said  Cradoc,  "  then  we're  not  leaving  it  to  Na- 
ture! " 

"  One  can't  leave  everything  to  Nature.  But  that's  a 
side  issue.  What  I  was  suggesting  is  that  civilisations 
that  grow  side  by  side  are  bound  to  be  rivals.  If  one 
expands  the  other's  got  to  make  room.  It's  like  two 
plants  in  one  pot;  one  of  them's  got  to  kill  the  other." 

"  Why  not  take  them  out  of  the  pot?  "  said  Cradoc. 

"  What  do  you  mean?  " 

"  Well,  if  two  plants  can't  live  in  a  pot,  don't  put  them 
in  a  pot.  If  two  nations  can't  live  inside  their  frontiers, 
don't  put  them  inside  frontiers." 

"  The  United  States  of  the  World!    Utopia!  " 

"  Everything  that  exists  has  been  a  Utopia.  Germany 
to-day  is  a  united  country ;  before  Napoleon  came  it  com- 
prised three  hundred  and  eighteen  States.  Well,  the  three 
hundred  and  eighteen  States  were  taken  out  of  their  pots, 
and  there  you  are." 

"  Yes,  and  they  were  taken  out  by  force.  Force  is  the 
only  rule.  You  can  take  it  that  war  is  a  biological  ne- 
cessity." 

"  I  think  it  was  a  German  said  that." 

"  Well,  even  a  German  can  speak  the  truth." 

"  You'd  better  not  say  that  in  public,"  said  the  pris- 
oner, smiling.  The  doctor  looked  irritated.  He  ought 
not  to  have  committed  himself  with  this  man,  interesting 
though  he  was.  Still  he  was  anxious  to  make  his  point. 
"  Look  here,"  he  said,  "  you've  got  to  recognize  that  only 


AMONG  THE  YAHOOS  191 

the  fighting  races  have  been  fine  races,  learned,  noble 
races.  The  Chinese  aren't  fighters,  and  there  they  lie, 
stupefied  in  tradition  and  opium;  the  Italians  rotted  for 
four  centuries,  and  it  needed  the  war  against  Austria  to 
make  them  a  nation." 

"  True  enough,"  said  Cradoc,  "  and  I  won't  ask  you  to 
show  that  the  modernised  Chinaman  has  produced  Ming 
pottery  or  a  new  Confucius;  and  I  won't  press  the  point 
that  this  entirely  rotten,  pacific  Italy  produced  more  great 
pictures  than  all  the  rest  of  the  world;  I'll  just  ask  you  to 
say  whether  you  think  that  ideal  fighting  race,  the  Rus- 
sian Tartar,  has  proved  an  example  of  nobility,  cleanli- 
ness and  justice;  and  perhaps  you'll  tell  me  what  you 
think  of  the  Turk,  who  has  fought  everything  he  ever  saw 
for  the  last  thousand  years,  without  ever  producing  a  pic- 
ture, a  book,  a  judge  you  could  not  buy,  and  who  has 
domesticated  through  the  east  only  one  animal:  the 
louse." 

"  You're  incorrigible,"  said  the  Doctor.  "  By  the  way, 
I  suppose  I  ought  not  to  tell  you,  but  the  British  offensive 
has  started  on  the  Somme." 

Cradoc  was  silent  for  a  moment.  "  Oh.  Then  let's 
hope  we  shall  be  beaten.  Only  if  we  are  beaten  shall  we 
turn  against  the  tyrants." 


IV 


IT  happened  as  Monica  had  expected.  As  she  stood 
behind  the  shield,  posting  upon  the  chart  the  output  of 
the  last  hour,  she  grew  conscious  of  a  presence  behind 
her  and  turned  with  an  unreasonable  start,  as  if  she  had 
not  known  that  in  the  danger  buildings  every  one  must 
come  soft-footed.  For  a  moment  they  looked  at  each 


192  BLIND  ALLEY 

other  in  silence,  and  Monica  was  filled  with  a  glad  shy- 
ness, for  his  good  looks,  the  brilliance  of  his  blue  eyes 
and  the  close-cropped,  curly  brown  hair  exhaled  mas- 
culinity and  taste  for  good  living.  He  was  so  real,  after 
having  been  incredible  during  the  week-end.  Meanwhile, 
he  looked  at  her,  and  thought:  "  I  haven't  seen  you  for 
four  days,  and  IVe  managed  to  miss  you."  It  struck  him 
as  fatal  that  he  should  miss  her.  She  ought  not  to  have 
mattered  to  him.  Was  she  not,  after  all,  meant  to  be  a 
toy  he  would  break  to  see  what  there  was  inside?  In- 
stead of  that  she  was  assuming  importance,  and  he  hated 
to  think  that  anything  should  be  important,  except  him- 
self. 

"  Good  morning,  Miss  Oakley,"  he  said,  and  felt  shy. 
"  How  are  things?  " 

"  Oh,  pretty  well.  Picric  is  giving  rather  more  trouble 
than  T.  N.  T." 

"  Oh,  of  course.    The  crystals  are  coarser." 

They  talked  for  a  little  time  in  jerks,  conscious  that 
this  incoherent  conversation  about  densities  and  piston- 
courses  was  accompanied  by  a  secret  song.  He  thought: 
"  I  adore  you,"  and  said,  "  It's  clear  65  degrees  makes  the 
best  bag." 

He  went  into  the  outer  shop  for  a  moment  to  see  the 
machine  at  work  and  to  disarm  suspicion.  Then  he  came 
back,  and  Monica  found  herself  tense  as  if  an  instinct 
told  her  that  decisive  action  was  now  inevitable. 

At  first  he  had  had  real  questions  to  ask  her;  now  he 
could  ask  her  only  a  question  that  she  could  not  answer. 
But  he  surprised  her,  as  he  always  did,  so  much  swifter  is 
the  male  than  the  quiescent  woman.  She  shrank  away 
as  with  a  hurried  movement  he  seized  her  by  the  wrist  and 
closed  her  hand  upon  a  small  parcel.  She  realised  that 
she  had  been  given  a  letter  and  something  else.  In  the 


AMONG  THE   YAHOOS  193 

whirl  of  her  emotions  she  could  not  understand  why  he 
should  assume  a  hard  voice: 

"  So  far,  so  good,  Miss  Oakley.  This  chart  should  now 
be  kept  on  the  basis  of  temperature  variation  only.  Please 
see  to  it." 

He  went  out,  followed  by  the  eyes  of  the  girls  as  he 
passed  the  shield. 

"  Oh,  ain't  'e  7orty,"  said  Ivy  Badger. 

"  I  think  he's  lovely,"  said  Miss  Penn. 

Monica  felt  hurt,  though  she  now  understood  that  he 
was  keeping  up  the  part  of  the  cold  employer.  Perhaps 
at  heart  he  was  a  cold  employer.  Then  she  discovered 
with  surprise  that  she  rather  liked  that  idea:  those  harsh 
tones,  that  implication  of  male  dominance,  pleased  while 
it  outraged  her.  But  she  was  not  in  the  mood  for  psy- 
chology, and  when  at  last,  during  the  dinner  hour,  she  was 
able  to  get  away,  she  tore  open  the  envelope  with  hands 
that  excitement  made  dry.  In  the  envelope  was  a  large 
key,  and  with  it  a  note: 

"  Most  exquisite,  most  adorable,  copper- crowned  lily, 
eyes  soft  as  water  and  hard  as  steel,  mouth  that  Cupid 
might  steal  with  which  to  make  a  bow,  most  exquisite, 
most  adorable  .  .  . 

"  This  is  the  key  of  a  place  they  call  Bull's  Field.  It 
lies  along  the  Medway,  eight  hundred  yards  from  here  as 
you  walk  away  from  Rochester.  This  key  will  let  you  in 
at  the  door  in  the  palisade,  wisely  set  by  the  Providence 
of  Lovers  in  the  lane  off  the  main  road.  At  seven  to-night 
you  will  turn  this  key.  It  will  let  you  into  Bull's  Field 
as  they  call  it,  into  the  Garden  of  Eden  if  you  like  .  .  . 

"  Most  exquisite,  most  adorable,  I  place  in  each  of  your 
palms  a  kiss  so  heavy  that  you  shall  carry  the  stigmata 
of  Eros." 

She  looked  at  the  key  for  a  long  time.    So  it  had  come. 


194  BLIND   ALLEY 

She  was  frightened  and  unhappy  because  she  knew  that 
resist  him  as  she  might  she  must  resist  herself  less  faith- 
fully. 

Later,  as  the  wooden  door  slammed  behind  her,  her 
heart  would  not  be  still,  though  Bull's  Field  was  reassur- 
ingly empty.  It  was  a  large  building  plot  where  one  day 
the  Cottenham  Works  might  extend.  Now,  behind  its 
fences  it  lay  a  patch  of  rank  grass  where  the  nettles  had 
grown  tall.  A  few  field  flowers,  shy  blue  speedwell  and 
stitchwort,  spattered  the  grass  with  little  blue  or  white 
eyes,  grew  where  they  would;  here  and  there  brown  and 
yellow  kidney  vetch  asserted  itself.  She  was  all  alone, 
and  she  thought:  "I  have  come.  I  could  go  away,  it's 
still  time."  But  she  knew  that  it  was  too  late.  For  a 
moment  she  played  with  a  vision  of  herself,  the 
Monica  she  ought  to  be,  with  her  hair  close  plaited, 
hard  collars  and  cuffs,  an  interest  in  historical  mon- 
uments and  Sunday  schools.  But  she  realised  that 
she  was  not  that  sort  of  Monica,  and  told  herself,  with  a 
dry,  humorous  smile:  "I  suppose  one's  the  best  sort  of 
Monica  one  can  be."  Then  she  started,  for  she  had  not 
noticed  against  the  opposite  fence  a  small  shanty  on 
wheels,  on  the  wall  of  which  was  painted:  FOREMAN'S 
OFFICE.  She  did  not  have  time  to  wonder  why  it  was 
there,  for  there  was  somebody  inside.  The  window 
opened,  and  Cottenham  looked  out  at  her.  He  did  not 
smile,  nor  sign  to  her  to  come,  but  so  remained,  fixed  and 
silent,  rather  sad,  as  if  he  too  shared  her  fears  and  hesi- 
tations and  was  being  the  best  Cottenham  he  could. 
Monica  faintly  shrugged  her  shoulders  and  slowly  walked 
towards  the  shanty.  When  the  door  closed  behind  her 
she  set  her  back  against  it  as  if  she  had  come  so  far  and 
only  now  acquired  the  strength  to  turn  back.  She  was 
very  frightened.  She  thought  he  would  seize  her  and 


AMONG  THE  YAHOOS  195 

crush  her  with  caresses  that  would  delight  and  terrify  her. 
She  half  hoped  that  he  would.  If  only  he  would  terrify 
her,  disgust  her,  she  could  save  herself  yet.  How  she 
would  hate  it  if  he  did,  and  how  she  would  bless  him! 
But  Cottenham  took  two  steps  forward,  his  eyes  large  as 
if  he  doubted  his  own  delight,  reluctant  steps,  as  if  he 
were  assured  of  defeat  within  his  own  victory.  Then  he 
took  both  her  hands,  that  stiffened  and  withdrew  while 
yet  they  clasped  his  own,  and  silently  he  knelt  at  her 
feet,  pressed  his  forehead  against  the  hands  that  almost  at 
once,  reassured  and  pitying,  gently  stroked  upwards  the' 
short  rebelliousness  of  the  brown  hair. 

It  seemed  so  natural  and  easy,  the  course  of  that  hour. 
He  kissed  her  hands,  but  he  had  done  so  before:  it  seemed 
too  simple.  Then,  holding  her  by  the  arms,  gently  as  a 
man  may  hold  a  butterfly  which  he  fears  to  crush,  she 
was  quite  close  to  him  yet  still  felt  free.  Then  his  arms 
were  round  her,  not  urgent,  it  seemed,  not  arms  con- 
quering and  cruel,  but  arms  supporting,  in  that  moment 
of  her  weakness.  So  tender,  so  gentle  was  it  that  she  felt 
he  feared  his  own  desire.  It  was  not  the  man  sought  his 
victory,  but  the  woman  taking  pity  on  his  incredulous 
delight.  It  was  she,  consoling  rather  than  abandoned, 
laid  her  cheek  upon  his.  And  when  at  last  he  held  her 
close  and  sought  lips  which  she  averted  yet  did  not  re- 
fuse, there  was  in  the  caress  a  character  of  the  inevitable. 
For  long  minutes,  silently,  they  sat  upon  the  bench  that 
was,  with  the  rough  wooden  table,  the  only  furniture  of 
the  shanty.  Monica  had  no  thoughts.  She  was  con- 
scious only  of  emotions,  not  only  the  pleasure  of  his  con- 
tact, but  the  joy  of  feeling  that  she  had  now  gone  too  far 
to  draw  back:  she  was  liberated  from  decision. 

She  grew  conscious  of  an  unrest  in  him.  He  kissed  her 
more  urgently.  A  certain  roughness  came  into  his  em- 


196  BLIND   ALLEY 

brace.  She  did  not  understand  then  what  she  understood 
later,  that  his  fervour  was  passing,  that  he  was  begin- 
ning to  think  of  time.  Exquisite  as  was  Monica  in  his 
arms  he  could  not  feel  free!  The  high  attractiveness  of 
the  scene  frightened  him.  How  long  had  it  been  going  on 
for  —  ten  minutes  or  half  an  hour?  How  was  he  to  tell? 
And  he  cursed  the  minute  for  being  so  sweet  that  he  could 
not  measure  its  flight.  He  thought  of  Julia.  And  still 
Monica  did  not  move,  but  lay  in  his  arms,  languid  with 
content.  It  was  horrible.  Would  the  girl  so  remain. 
Might  it  be  his  fate  to  stay  thus  for  endless  lives  holding 
in  his  arms  a  girl  who  owed  him  her  ecstasy? 

"  Oh,"  he  thought,  "  I  wish  I'd  let  her  alone."  Then  he 
saw  the  shadow  the  lashes  made  upon  her  flushed  cheek 
and  felt  glad  of  his  own  folly. 

As  last,  as  if  by  agreement,  they  shook  free.  He  said: 
"  I  must  go." 

Monica  looked  up  at  him:  "  Yes,  of  course  you  must  go. 
Good  night,"  she  murmured  softly.  He  held  her  to  him 
in  an  embrace  in  which  was  delight,  impatience,  hatred, 
gratitude,  and  was  gone.  She  followed  him  soon  after, 
felt  so  light  and  removed  from  the  thick  world  that  she 
wondered  if,  like  Ophelia's  ghost,  she  could  have  trodden 
the  cream  and  cold  corollas  of  the  dog-daisies  without 
causing  them  to  stoop. 


"WELL,  you  might  have  telephoned,"  said  Julia. 
"  I  couldn't  get  through ;  they  said  you  were  engaged." 
"  We  haven't  had  a  call  all  the  afternoon." 
"  Well,  the  exchange  always  says  engaged  when  they're 
slack." 
"  You  know  perfectly  well  how  angry  cook  is  if  the 


AMONG  THE  YAHOOS  197 

dinner's  spoilt.  And  it's  not  easy  to  get  a  cook.  Be- 
sides, why  are  you  so  late?  You're  always  late  now- 
adays." 

Cottenham  felt  very  angry.  Julia  was  that  night  in- 
deed ebony  and  amber.  Her  frock  of  yellow  brocade, 
with  the  long  close  sleeves,  and  the  necklet  of  green  jade 
made  her  immensely  tall  and  disdainful.  So,  as  he  was 
very  angry,  he  courted  her  with  a  little  gleam  of  passion 
and  desire  in  his  blue  eyes.  "  It's  all  very  well,"  she 
grumbled,  as  he  kissed  her  behind  the  ear,  a  caress  he 
knew  she  never  long  resisted.  "  It's  all  very  well,"  she 
repeated  in  a  muffled  voice.  It  was  like  a  purr. 

And  as  he  kissed  her  he  thought:  "  Twenty  minutes 
here  and  there.  My  duty  to  this  woman  and,  damn  it, 
my  desire  too.  And  this  damned  war,  plotting  out  your 
day  from  morning  to  evening,  tying  you  by  the  leg,  mak- 
ing all  movement  impossible;  if  you  aren't  a  slave  in 
an  explosives  works,  you're  a  slave  in  the  army  because 
you've  committed  the  crime  of  not  being  over  forty-one. 
And,  you  idiot,  you're  trying  to  do  all  that,  to  make  love 
to  a  wife  whom  you  adore,  and  to  a  girl  whom  you're 
going  to  adore,  with  every  chance  of  meeting  a  third  girl 
whom  you  will  also  adore.  Oh,  why  was  I  born?  " 

VI 

A  CHARACTER  of  intimacy  formed  about  Bull's  Field. 
Once  upon  a  time  it  had  been  a  building  plot,  and  now  the 
dead  cats,  old  hats,  broken  bottles  and  pots  were  covered 
with  merciful  nettles,  bramble,  flowering  blackberry; 
every  seed  the  weary  wind  let  fall  had  come  to  rest  and 
now  to  blooming.  Along  one  side  of  the  high  palings 
grew  thick  dog-daisies ;  patches  of  lucerne  and  clover  were 
fragrant  with  the  promise  of  hay.  The  exquisiteness  of 


198  BLIND   ALLEY 

Bull's  Field  depended  upon  the  palings,  erected  before 
the  war,  therefore  high,  over  eight  feet,  and  well  joined, 
so  that  once  the  door  closed  it  became  an  oasis.  As  yet 
it  had  no  trees,  though  here  and  there  tiny  oaks  were  be- 
ginning to  sprout.  As  it  could  not  be  overlooked,  often 
the  hurried  lovers,  between  the  closing  of  the  factory  and 
the  imminent  claims  of  the  man's  home,  could  walk  in 
Eden,  arms  entwined  about  waists,  and  cheeks  upon 
shoulders  laid. 

Almost  every  night  now  they  came  to  Bull's  Field. 
Monica  loved  it. 

"  It's  queer,"  she  said  once.  "  I  who  come  from  the 
real  country,  where  in  spring  primroses  and  bluebells  grow 
so  thick  that  walking  seems  a  sin,  it's  queer  that  I  should 
find  in  all  these  ragged  little  flowers  something  that  I 
can't  find  in  Udimore  Copse." 

"  You  find  me,"  said  Cottenham. 

She  smiled.     "  How  conceited  you  are,  Frank." 

"  Yes.  And  you  like  me  conceited.  Is  it  wonderful? 
Isn't  it  enough  to  make  a  man  conceited  to  think  you  care 
for  him?  " 

"  Flatterer,  as  well  as  conceited." 

"  Agreed.  A  wealth  of  vices.  And  it  takes  many  vices 
to  make  one  virtue  palatable.  There's  something  very 
insipid  about  virtue.  There  used  to  be  something  very 
insipid  about  you.  The  first  time  I  held  your  hand  it  was 
—  well,  a  capital  imitation  of  ice  cream." 

"  And  may  I  ask  what  I  am  like  now?  "  said  Monica. 

"  Oh,  custard." 

"  The  grace  of  your  metaphors,  Frank,  entirely  carries 
me  away." 

He  took  her  face  between  his  hands  and  suddenly 
looked  serious.  "  You  like  my  beastly  metaphors ;  you 
like  me  coarse,  and  you  like  me  cruel;  you  like  anything 


AMONG  THE   YAHOOS  199 

that  makes  you  feel  I  have  stripped  off  my  body  and 
stand  before  you  clad  in  nothing  but  my  soul."  He 
crushed  her  face  a  little,  twisting  her  ears  to  hurt  her. 
"  You  like  me  beastly  because  you  know  that  all  men  are 
beastly  inside,  and  because  it's  such  a  damned  big  com- 
pliment to  show  you  without  artifice  just  how  beastly  I 
am." 

She  closed  her  eyes  and  murmured :  "  Don't,  Frank !  " 

"  Don't  what?  " 

"  Don't  make  me  see  myself  as  I  am." 

His  laugh  had  a  cruel  ring  as  he  bent  to  kiss  her.  "  Be- 
fore I've  done  with  you,"  he  said,  "  you  shall  see  me  as  I 
am,  and  yet  you  shall  love  me ;  and  you  shall  see  yourself 
as  you  are,  and  you  won't  know  whether  you  wished  you 
still  were  blind  or  whether  you  should  pray  for  tenfold 
sight."  Again  he  kissed  her,  drawing  her  to  him  and 
crushing  her,  as  if  destroying  in  her  some  barrier.  "  Be- 
fore I've  done  with  you,  in  Eden,  you  will  have  eaten  the 
fruit  that  tells  you  what  is  right  and  what  is  wrong,  and 
I'm  damned  if  youll  know  one  from  the  other." 

She  struggled  a  little.     "Don't,  Frank." 

But  as  he  did  not  release  her  she  used  the  feminine 
weapon.  "  You're  hurting  me,"  she  murmured.  And  he 
said:  "  I  like  hurting  you."  Then  she  realised  that  this 
man  knew  how  to  turn  the  woman's  weapon  against  her; 
she  feared  him  and  rejoiced  in  her  fear. 

She  was  not  always  surrendered.  Sometimes  Cotten- 
ham  did  not  seek  to  make  her  feel  his  mastery.  He  would 
bring  her  the  thought  which  had  preoccupied  him  during 
the  day.  Often  he  talked  about  the  war.  Just  then  the 
gallant  Roumanian  Horse  was  scuttling  back  to  Rou- 
mania,  the  Germans  at  its  heels,  and  Mackensen  was 
pressing  in  over  every  frontier. 

"  It's  perfectly  lovely,"  said  Cottenham,  "  to  watch 


200  BLIND  ALLEY 

Mackensen  work.  It's  so  perfectly  done.  First  he 
shoves  in  the  passes,  gets  troops  to  concentrate  against 
him  there,  then  crosses  the  Danube  in  their  rear,  catches 
half,  disperses  the  rest  towards  the  south,  where  they  meet 
another  body  that's  crossed  the  Danube;  right,  left,  then 
left  again  to  finish;  it's  measured  like  a  sonata." 

"  It's  all  very  well,"  said  Monica,  "  but  it's  our  ally." 

"  Don't  be  such  a  materialist.  Can't  you  feel  delight 
in  seeing  a  man  do  a  job  perfectly?" 

"  We've  got  to  win  the  war,"  said  Monica. 

"  Oh,  leave  that  to  the  Daily  Mail  Let's  look  at  the 
artistic  side  of  it." 

They  often  used  to  quarrel  about  the  war  because  Cot- 
tenham  was  so  impersonal  about  it.  At  bottom  the  war 
did  not  interest  him  much. 

"  The  war,  after  all,"  he  said,  "  awakes  such  exag- 
gerated interest.  When  in  England  they  talk  about  the 
war  one  might  think  there  never  had  been  a  war  before." 

"  Not  a  war  of  this  size,"  said  Monica. 

"  Much  larger  wars.  Germany  has  been  rolled  over  by 
the  tide  of  war  from  end  to  end,  and  for  thirty  years  on 
end,  and  rolled  over  by  Napoleon  as  he  went  to  Russia, 
and  rolled  over  as  he  came  back.  And  the  Arab  got  half- 
way across  France.  And  the  Turk  got  to  Vienna.  And 
Charles  the  Twelfth,  the  Swede,  got  to  Prague.  We 
haven't  been  touched  by  the  war,  and  we  won't  be.  Mod- 
ern armies  are  too  big  to  move.  They  sit  in  the  mud  and 
heave,  and  by  the  look  of  it  they'll  heave  till  doomsday." 

"  Do  you  mean  to  say  we  shan't  win  the  war?  "  asked 
Monica,  this  being  to  her  a  new  idea. 

"  Nobody  can  win  the  war.  The  losers,  as  we  call 
them,  are  crushed  and  ground  by  defeat;  the  winners  are 
inflated  by  their  successful  militarism  into  submission  to 
an  autocracy  more  cruel  than  the  one  they  overthrew. 


AMONG  THE  YAHOOS  201 

There's  no  winning  wars.  If  we're  beaten  we'll  lose  our 
self-respect,  and  we'll  bleed  in  taxes.  If  we  win,  we  shall 
live  in  fear  of  Germany's  revenge,  so  we  shall  saddle  our- 
selves with  an  army  and  a  navy  fit  to  meet  that  revenge ; 
living  in  fear  of  militarism  we  shall  institute  militarism; 
feeling  the  need  for  unity,  and  having  won  by  force,  we 
shall  put  our  faith  in  force.  If  we  win  we  shall  liberalise 
Germany  until  she  becomes  a  sham  England,  and  we  shall 
militarise  England  until  she  becomes  a  sham  Germany. 
If  we  knock  down  the  Kaiser  and  Hindenburg,  it  will 
only  be  to  set  up  Mr.  Hughes  and  Mr.  Bottomley.  War's 
a  game  of  musical  chairs  with  Death  at  the  piano." 

She  did  not  answer.  She  hardly  understood  him,  but 
his  vehemence  upset  her.  It  was  a  rare  vehemence,  for 
Cottenham  did  not  feel  things  strongly.  He  was  capable 
only  of  rage.  As  a  rule  he  turned  to  irony: 

"  It's  the  things  round  the  war  that  matter,"  he  said ; 
"war's  only  a  symptom;  it  means  that  the  capitalist 
holds  unsold  stocks,  and  that  the  democracy  has  grown 
bored  with  chocolates  and  cinemas,  just  as  it  got  sick 
of  bread  and  circuses.  What's  the  struggle  between  cap- 
ital and  labour  but  a  desire  for  change?  At  bottom  the 
capitalist  is  sick  of  making  money,  just  as  the  operative 
is  sick  of  making  tin  tacks.  So  they  make  war,  war 
among  themselves,  war  against  each  other;  it  makes 
variety  in  the  newspapers.  After  all,  there's  never  been 
a  serial  to  beat  this  war." 

"  I  wish  you  wouldn't  talk  like  that,"  said  Monica. 
"  One  might  think  you  didn't  feel  anything." 

"  Perhaps  I  don't.  I've  started  thinking.  One  can't 
do  both.  And  there  aren't  many  people  thinking.  It 
isn't  thinking  sets  up  the  shop  stewards  against  the  trade 
union  leaders;  it's  impatience,  it's  obstinacy,  it's  raw 
hatred.  Feelings,  that's  what  it  is.  When  two  men  start 


202  BLIND  ALLEY 

thinking  they  burgle  a  neighbour's  house.  When  they 
start  feeling  they  fight  each  other  for  the  swag." 

"  What  do  you  think's  going  to  happen? "  asked 
Monica. 

"  Change,  the  thing  that  one  side  calls  progress  and 
the  other  decadence.  All  sorts  of  things.  Parliaments 
are  going,  kings  are  going.  In  England  kings  and  par- 
liaments won't  exactly  go;  they'll  sort  of  get  overlooked. 
Parliament  will  continue  to  meet  and  will  pass  Acts,  and 
Acts,  and  nobody  will  care.  The  only  Acts  that  matter 
will  be  those  about  which  Parliament  telephones  the 
Chairman  of  the  Trade  Union  Congress  in  England  or 
Gompers  in  America  and  asks  if  that  will  be  all  right. 
It'll  go  on  for  hundreds  of  years.  In  a  couple  of  cen- 
turies some  sort  of  Asquith  will  make  speeches  about  the 
historical  mother  of  parliaments,  or  the  mother  of  his- 
torical parliaments,  it  doesn't  matter,  and  be  saluted  by 
the  sentries  because  he  wears  a  cocked  hat.  It  will  mat- 
ter as  much  as  the  Master  of  the  Buckhounds,  and  the 
Board  of  Green  Cloth.  You  see,  that's  the  way  we  do  it 
in  England;  we  never  bury  the  dead  past,  we  wrap  it  up 
in  the  present." 

"  But,"  said  Monica,  "  that  sort  of  thing's  what  they 
call  revolutionary,  isn't  it?  " 

"  Well,  we  need  revolution.  Nothing  but  a  revolution 
in  the  government  will  prevent  a  revolution  among  the 
people." 

Suddenly  his  mood  changed.  He  ran  his  fingers 
through  her  hair,  bending  back  her  head.  "  What  rot  I 
talk,"  he  murmured  hoarsely.  She  tried  to  shake  her 
head.  No,  it  wasn't  rot.  It  was  not  coherent,  but  it 
stimulated  her,  and  she  did  not  know  whether  her  body 
responded  more  to  the  rough  sweetness  of  his  touch  or 
the  waywardness  of  his  speech.  For  a  time  she  was  con- 


AMONG  THE  YAHOOS  203 

scious  of  a  resentful  emptiness  because  at  half-past  seven, 
indeed,  not  later  than  twenty  to  eight,  he  had  to  leave 
her.  Half  hours  in  Eden,  he  said  once  laughingly,  but 
there  was  a  bitterness  in  the  laughter,  and  at  the  door 
he  ran  back  to  seize  her  once  more  in  his  arms  and  to 
bend  her  to  caresses  that  grew  more  audacious.  As  she 
lay  in  the  patch  of  clover  she  was  minded  to  weep.  She 
felt  so  much  more  lonely  now  that  he  had  filled  some 
portion  of  her  life  and  made  vacuum  in  the  rest.  Slowly 
she  moved  across  the  patch  to  the  broken  grass  where  his 
body  had  lain,  and  there  buried  her  eyes  upon  her  arm 
and  wept  because  under  her  lips  she  felt  only  the  cold 
fragrance  of  the  flowers. 

One  night,  towards  the  end  of  August,  they  attempted 
a  more  audacious  escapade. 

"  It  isn't  enough,"  said  Cottenham,  "  these  half  hours." 

"  No,"  she  whispered. 

Both  were  bearing  the  penalty  of  their  sensations: 
every  time  they  needed  a  little  more. 

"Si  tu  veux  faisons  un  reve,  montons  sur  mon  pale- 
jroi"  murmured  Cottenham.  "  Alas,  I  have  no  palfrey 
to  carry  you,  but  this  is  what  we'll  do." 

And  the  next  night,  according  to  this  plan,  at  about 
half-past  eleven,  Cottenham,  with  an  exquisite  sense  of 
breaking  bounds,  escaped  from  his  silent  house  and  met 
her  on  the  Maidstone  Road.  It  was  a  hot  night,  and 
soft  rain  was  falling.  In  the  mist  they  met,  said  Cotten- 
ham, like  the  damned  shades  over  the  chaldrons.  They 
did  not  speak  much  then.  At  last  they  felt  free  because 
they  were  lost  in  the  night:  none  could  see  them,  so  noth- 
ing was.  They  went,  careless  of  direction,  in  the  rain 
that  fell  as  a  merciful  shroud,  stopping  only  now  and 
then,  in  a  sudden  access  of  emotion,  to  clasp  and  for  a 
moment  to  hold.  It  was  only  later  that  Cottenham  grew 


204  BLIND  ALLEY 

light:  "  You  know,"  he  said,  "  we've  no  luck.  It's  rain- 
ing. It  never  struck  us  it  might  rain  when  we  were 
together.  Hard  lines,  too.  Two  people  ought  never  to 
go  out  together  if  there's  no  chance  to  sit  down." 

She  smiled,  and  he  ran  wet  fingers  down  her  coat  col- 
lar. She  shivered  and  found  herself  giggling,  but  he 
did  not  remove  his  hand,  and  in  a  moment  she  marvelled 
at  herself,  for  pleasure  lingered  in  the  incongruous  caress. 
Indeed  she  found  herself  leaning  against  him  with 
greater  abandonment.  She  could  hardly  understand 
what  spell  was  falling  upon  her.  Three  months  before, 
how  incredible  it  would  have  seemed  that  without  much 
argument  as  to  seemliness  or  morals  she  should  do  such 
things.  She  had  slid,  and  slid.  She  told  Cottenham 
this.  He  laughed.  "Love,"  he  said,  "  is  a  butter-slide 
and  at  the  end  you  fall  into  life." 

She  did  not  laugh.  She  was  afraid  of  life  as  of  love. 
Such  things  were  not  within  the  Knapenden  programme. 
Or  at  any  rate  life  had  always  seemed  impossible  until 
it  was  licensed  by  the  vicar.  All  this  was  exquisitely 
fraudulent.  Monica  occasionally  thought  herself  crim- 
inal, and  as  remorse  did  not  arise,  concluded  that  the 
roses  and  raptures  of  vice  claimed  more  colour  than  the 
lilies  and  languors  of  virtue. 

She  tried  to  explain  once.  "  Of  course,"  said  Cotten- 
ham. "  You're  waking  up.  You've  been  asleep.  Sleep- 
ing beauty!  And  I  assure  you  that  in  the  old  fairy  tale 
Prince  Charming  was  not  even  introduced.  What's  con- 
verting you,  my  Monica,  who  are  moral  by  habit  if  not 
by  practice,  is  that  you  know  you're  doing  your  duty." 

"  My  duty !  "  said  Monica,  rather  sharply.  She  did 
not  like  to  be  told  that  she  was  moral  by  habit  but  not 
by  practice.  She  was  woman  enough  to  want  to  be  told 
that  she  was  moral  by  habit  and  immoral  by  exception. 


AMONG  THE  YAHOOS  205 

"  Yes,  your  duty.  It's  the  duty  of  every  girl  to  become 
a  woman."  He  was  surprised  at  her  response,  for  she 
seized  him  by  the  arm  and  buried  her  face  upon  his 
breast.  Only  after  a  moment  did  he  understand  her,  did 
he  feel  how  terrified  she  stood  before  her  desire  to  attain 
womanhood.  That  night,  their  perceptions  were  sharp, 
and  they  spoke  more  freely.  Held  in  each  other's  arms, 
leaning  against  a  gate,  he  said  a  queer,  eruptive  thing 
that  shook  her. 

"  Julia'd  never  divorce  me,  and  I'd  lose  Rupert." 

She  held  him  close.  Mixed  in  her  pity,  as  she  under- 
stood what  had  passed  through  his  mind,  this  sudden 
desire  to  come  to  her,  to  her  only,  there  ran  her  first  thrill 
of  hatred  for  Julia.  And  he  had  never  before  pronounced 
his  wife's  name.  He  had  too  much  tact. 

"  No,  no,"  she  murmured,  and  for  the  first  time  dragged 
his  head  down  to  her  lips,  as  if  to  assure  him  that  she 
made  no  bargain.  It  thrilled  and  horrified  him,  this  sur- 
render, for  it  made  him  responsible.  She  was  going  to 
love  him,  then.  And  love  was  so  tragic.  What  a  mania 
women  had  for  love !  Why  couldn't  they  be  content  with 
gestures?  And  so  she  did  not  understand  why,  so 
sharply,  he  drew  back  from  her.  But  he  paid  the  penalty 
of  understanding  her  too  well:  seeing  her  shaken  and 
surprised,  he  embraced  her  with  a  sort  of  despair.  If 
she  had  known  him  as  he  knew  women,  she  would  then 
have  realised  that  he  could  not  love  her.  But  she  thought 
that  he  had  seized  her  again  because  he  loved  her  uncon- 
trollably. And  as  he  realised  this  his  agony  of  respon- 
sibility grew.  "  What  shall  I  do?  "  he  thought,  as  slowly 
they  went  in  the  soft  night;  "  if  I  let  her  alone  she  loves 
my  coldness,  if  I  pursue  her  she  loves  my  ardour.  No, 
there's  no  stopping  on  the  butter-slide.  Poetic  meta- 
phor! " 


206  BLIND  ALLEY 

He  escaped  better  than  she  the  penalties  of  their  attrac- 
tion. He  had  the  masculine  privilege  of  interests  and 
occupations  which  combat  emotion  by  absorbing  intel- 
lect. At  the  works  his  day  was  a  continual  agitation, 
points  of  accountancy  to  settle,  tactful  conferences  with 
Woolwich  inspectors;  or  some  decision  must  be  taken 
as  to  the  scrapping  of  defective  material,  the  venture- 
some purchase  of  new  plant;  or  some  difference  of  opin- 
ion arose  with  the  Ministry  of  Munitions,  when  he  had 
received  four  different  orders  from  three  different  depart- 
ments, all  of  them  different,  two  contradictory,  and  those 
two  from  the  same  department;  or  Royalty  appeared, 
and  selected  shops  were  violated  with  soap;  or  people  in 
strange  clothes,  deputed  by  one  of  our  Allies  and  accom- 
panied by  an  interpreter  who  could  make  himself  under- 
stood neither  in  English  nor  in  Vlacho-Bosniac,  came  to 
see  a  special  process,  and  also  to  ogle  the  girls.  It  helped 
him,  all  this,  and  yet  it  enraged  him,  this  absorption  of 
a  fleeting  life  by  sterile  occupations.  "  After  all,"  he 
thought,  "  there's  only  one  sport  in  the  world  that's 
worth  while." 

Monica  did  not  put  it  like  that.  While  Cottenham 
thought  that  passion  was  the  only  sport  in  the  world, 
Monica  never  thought  of  any  other  sport.  Born  to  love 
she  could  turn  to  nothing  else.  Often  she  told  herself, 
with  a  sort  of  terror,  that  she  was  forgetting  her  old 
pleasures.  It  was  as  if  she  had  cared  for  nothing  until 
she  cared  for  him.  She  felt  that  her  life  was  evolving, 
and  she  shrank  away  from  the  thought  that  it  must  evolve 
entirely.  It  was  as  if  she  were  compelled  to  offer  her- 
self up  to  her  own  instincts.  Once  only,  as  she  sat  alone 
one  night  at  Castle  Hill,  did  she  put  it  clearly  to  herself: 
"  Men  are  being  killed  all  round.  Lots  of  girls  won't 
get  men.  Can  one  do  without  a  man?  I  used  to  think 


AMONG  THE  YAHOOS  207 

so.  I  suppose  one  can.  Lots  of  girls  do.  There's  work 
of  course.  Yes.  Miss  Livingstone's  lost  her  complexion. 
One  gets  so  skinny.  I  wonder  whether  work  agrees  with 
women." 

Monica  did  not  yet  understand  herself.  She  was  not 
clear  that  the  duty  of  a  girl  is  to  become  a  woman.  She 
was  merely  unable  to  discern  other  duties. 

VII 

THERE  were  times  in  Sir  Hugh's  life,  as  in  that  of  most 
men  who  are  rather  young  or  rather  old,  when  he  re- 
viewed his  life  and  compared  it  with  the  present.  He 
felt  rather  old  that  morning  as  he  turned  back  after 
passing  Policeman's  House.  September  was  nearly  done ; 
pale  mist  lay  imprisoned  between  the  hedges  that  broke 
into  little  fields  the  reclaimed  marsh.  Ahead  he  could 
see  the  elms  whose  leaves  were  growing  scanty  and  flut- 
tered dryly  in  the  cold  wind.  The  ploughed  fields,  run- 
ning away  towards  Stoat's  Farm,  looked  blackish  and 
damp,  as  if  they  could  grow  only  tares.  As  he  walked 
slowly  on  he  thought  of  the  old  days,  of  jolly  rags  at 
Eton,  of  old  Mother  Emily  Mary,  and  how  he  overdid  it 
on  jam  puffs  the  day  they  licked  Harrow.  He  sighed. 
He  had  not  been  happy  at  Eton;  as  a  boy  he  had  been 
meditative,  and  the  masters  discerned  in  this  an  ironic 
spirit  which  they  thought  bad  for  the  school.  So  he  was 
swished,  his  youth  being  a  period  which  did  not  spare 
the  child.  But  he  did  not  know  that;  forty  years  of  dis- 
tance gave  his  school  days  forty  years  of  charm.  And 
later,  Oxford,  being  your  own  master,  reckless  "  brek- 
kers ",  green  "  art"  jars  (daring  innovations  of  a  dying 
century),  —  and  then  life.  Money  in  one's  purse  and 
desires  on  which  to  spend  it.  Scraps  of  memories  rose 


208  BLIND  ALLEY 

in  him;  a  boisterous  party  the  night  the  Grand  Hotel 
opened,  and  later  an  extraordinary  afternoon  at  the  house 
of  some  woman  whose  name  he  had  forgotten,  an  after- 
noon overshadowed  by  a  rather  pasty,  ungainly  man  with 
a  beautiful  coarsened  face  and  eyes  sweet  and  melan- 
choly, called  Oscar  Wilde,  who  made  epigrams  the  like 
of  which  were  no  longer  made.  And  Mrs.  Douglas,  so 
like  Louise,  with  her  straight  brows  and  her  soft  black 
hair,  her  long,  graceful  body,  as  a  reed  giving  to  the 
wind.  She  was  dead,  yes.  And  other  things.  And  Lena. 
How  mad  he'd  been  for  Lena!  He  thought  of  the  first 
time  that  he  stroked  her  rather  coarse  red-brown  hair, 
and  said:  "You're  like  a  lioness  at  the  Zoo."  She 
laughed,  and  dug  her  ten  fingers  into  his  shoulders  like 
talons. 

"  Those  were  the  days,"  thought  Sir  Hugh.  Then  he 
told  himself  not  to  be  sentimental;  doubtless,  ten  years 
hence,  when  he  sat  or  stood  somewhere  else,  he  would 
think  of  himself  walking  past  the  farm  where  everlast- 
ingly hung  the  sign  "  New  Laid  Eggs",  and  would  tell 
himself:  "  Old  fellow,  what  a  pleasant,  melancholy  mood 
you  were  in  that  morning.  Those  were  the  days."  Yet 
he  thought  it  merciful  that  yesterday  should  always  be 
the  day. 

He  concluded  that  the  whole  art  of  life  must  consist  in 
the  accumulation  of  memories.  As  if  one  were  a  dor- 
mouse, storing  up  nuts,  and  waking  up  now  and  then 
from  that  profound  sleep  which  we  call  life  to  nibble  for 
a  moment  the  nut  of  the  past  and  then  go  to  sleep  again. 
As  he  looked  out  towards  Stoat's  Farm,  across  the  damp 
hollow  where  the  streamers  of  mist  rolled  and  unrolled 
like  veils,  he  wondered  what  sort  of  nut  he  was  putting 
away  in  his  store.  "  Not  much  of  a  nut,"  he  said,  aloud. 
"  It's  all  up  with  Roumania.  The  Germans  are  just 


AMONG  THE  YAHOOS  209 

pouring  in.  And  I  wonder  whether  we're  doing  any  good 
on  the  Somme.  The  papers  say  it's  all  right,  but  they 
always  say  that.  Sometimes  we  achieve  a  masterly 
advance,  and  frequently  a  masterly  retreat;  anyhow,  it's 
always  the  same  map.  We  take  places  we've  never 
heard  of,  and  we  forget  their  names  when  we  lose  them. 
We  just  dye  the  soil  a  little  redder." 

He  was  rather  disturbed  by  Stephen's  letter  of  the 
morning.  It  had  not  been  the  ordinary,  jaunty  letter, 
but  a  staccato  document  that  recalled  rather  the  Stephen 
who  burst  out  at  lunch  than  the  old,  slack  Stephen.  One 
part  of  it  had  rather  upset  Sir  Hugh,  so  he  took  it  out 
again  and  read  it: 

"...  saw  the  thing  quite  well  from  the  ridge.  That 
German  brigade  was  out  of  luck  that  morning;  I  rather 
think  they'd  calculated  on  getting  across  by  a  ford  a  little 
higher  up,  but  somehow  our  lot  got  to  the  ford  first,  and 
there  they  were,  what  was  left  of  the  brigade,  pinned  up 
against  the  river  inside  something  over  a  square  mile. 
Their  pioneers,  as  they  call  them,  had  just  got  a  sort  of 
bridge  across  as  I  got  to  the  ridge,  and  for  a  moment  I 
thought  they'd  get  across  all  right.  Somehow  we  weren't 
firing  much,  but  just  as  the  head  of  the  column  was 
almost  over,  our  shells  began  to  drop,  and  they  drew 
back  for  a  moment.  Then  for  a  moment  I  couldn't 
see  anything,  for  their  pals  were  putting  up  a  screen  of 
smoke  bombs.  You  could  see  them  fall,  pit-pat,  one 
after  the  other,  and  a  brown  cloud  came  up.  Then  they 
started  to  move  through  the  cloud,  and  as  they  did  it 
just  rained  shrapnel.  The  water  came  up  in  spouts.  I 
guess  they  were  trying  to  get  an  ammunition  lorry  across, 
the  idiots,  for  something  got  it,  and  it  went  up.  I  hap- 
pened to  catch  sight  of  something  in  the  air,  sort  of 
twirling.  Looked  like  a  man  with  his  uniform  on  fire. 


210  BLIND  ALLEY 

Then  they  tried  their  bridge  again,  and  as  their  pals 
didn't  dare  put  anything  more  across,  the  cloud  cleared. 
I  saw  three  shells  fall  one  after  the  other  on  the  bridge 
and  men  chucked  to  the  right  and  left  like  an  ant  heap 
that's  been  kicked.  And  then,  when  there  were  hundreds 
in  the  water,  their  heads  bobbing  like  corks,  a  couple  of 
our  planes  came  swooping  up-stream,  and  from  where  I 
was  I  could  hear  the  rattle  of  the  machine  guns  as  they 
potted  those  chaps  as  they  swam.  A  couple  of  incen- 
diary shells  fell  on  the  first  bridge ;  it  burned  at  once,  and 
I  could  see  men  and  horses  plunging  into  the  river,  and 
the  planes  turning  to  come  back,  going  up  and  down  like 
a  mowing  machine  upon  a  lawn.  ..." 

How  coldly  the  boy  told  it  all!  Killing  as  a  trade. 
Sir  Hugh  wondered  what  sort  of  Stephen  peace  would 
give  him  back.  He  chid  himself.  Hang  it  all!  There 
had  been  wars  before,  and  anyhow  these  things  were 
eternal.  He  turned  into  Stoat's  Farm  to  talk  to  Keele. 
The  old  man  was  very  bitter,  for  young  Keele  had  joined 
up  instead  of  sticking  to  the  farm. 

"  If  he's  killed  he  won't  be  a  shover  after  all,"  said 
the  old  farmer  bitterly.  Sir  Hugh  wondered  whether  he 
would  rather  see  his  son  dead  than  a  traitor  to  the  land. 
Then  they  talked  of  potato  blight.  Keele  had  had  no 
luck;  half  his  crop  was  lost,  and  with  masochist  enjoy- 
ment he  took  Sir  Hugh  into  the  blackened  kitchen  to 
show  him  some  leaves  he  had  kept,  all  purplish  and 
eaten  away  by  fungus. 

"  Did  you  spray?  "  said  Sir  Hugh. 

"  Spray!  "  snarled  the  old  man.  "  What's  the  good  of 
spraying?  You  didn't  have  to  spray  when  I  was  a 
nipper,  and  anyhow  you  can't  get  the  sulphate,  as  they 
call  it,  let  alone  if  a  bee  goes  near  a  flower  that's  been 
sprayed  it  dies." 


AMONG  THE  YAHOOS  211 

"  Oh,  nonsense,"  said  Sir  Hugh.  "  You  know  quite 
well  you  ought  to  have  sprayed." 

Keele  did  not  reply.  He  knew  better.  When  one  was 
a  nipper  one  didn't  have  to  spray.  Those  were  the  days. 

VIII 

WITH  a  suddenness  that  would  have  surprised  Monica 
if  she  had  been  a  social  student,  the  strike  broke  out. 
She  had  noticed  a  little  group  round  a  notice  inside  the 
factory  gate,  and  passed  it.  The  machines  had  started 
up.  She  felt  rather  depressed.  Then  she  heard  a  voice, 
Ivy  Badger's.  "  Tell  you  it's  true." 

"  No,  it  ain't." 

"Yes,  'tis." 

"  Well,  what  about  it?  "  said  Muriel  Penn. 

"  What  about  what?  "  asked  Rose. 

Then  Monica  thought  of  something  else.  Idiots  these 
girls  were.  Clank,  clank,  machine  number  three  choking 
again.  Oh,  how  she  hated  number  three.  Then  Ivy 
Badger  became  more  noticeable. 

"  Cheek,  I  call  it.  Why  shouldn't  we  work  overtime 
if  we  like?  " 

"  Motherly  care  for  our  little  constitutions,"  said 
Muriel  Penn. 

"  I  don't  think,"  said  Ivy.  "  But  I  shouldn't  mind  if 
they'd  treated  the  men  same  as  us.  Their  Lordships 
can  work  overtime  if  they  want." 

"  It's  a  shame." 

"  Shame !  "  repeated  the  shop. 

Monica  intervened.  "  Let's  have  a  little  less  talking, 
please,"  she  said. 

This  was  an  unfortunate  remark.  The  shop  imme- 
diately grew  infuriated,  and  Ivy  Badger,  getting  off  her 


BLIND  ALLEY 

bench,  stuck  both  her  hands  on  her  hips  and  cried: 
"  There'll  be  a  lot  more  talking  before  this  is  done. 
We're  going  on  strike." 

"  Yes,  we're  going  on  strike!  "  shouted  the  shop,  enthu- 
siastically adopting  the  idea  which  had  so  far  not 
occurred  to  them.  Monica  found  herself  speechless,  for 
every  girl  flung  down  her  scoop  or  kicked  over  her  bench, 
and  all  grouped  themselves  round  the  corpulent  form  of 
Ivy  Badger,  who  had  climbed  upon  a  table. 

"  Girls!  "  she  shouted,  "  we've  had  enough  of  it.  WeVe 
had  enough  of  their  old  buck.  If  you  haven't  seen  that 
notice  I'll  tell  you  what's  in  it:  The  men  can  work  over- 
time, and  the  girls  have  got  to  knock  off  at  six.  Is  it 
fair?  " 

"No!" 

"  Will  you  stand  it?  " 

"No!"  accompanied  by  stamping  feet. 

"  Do  you  want  Cottie  to  tell  you  when  it's  time  to 
go  home  to  Ma?  Or  will  you  please  yourselves?  I  tell 
you  I  ain't  come  here  to  be  prayed  on  and  tucked  up  in 
bed,  and  I  don't  want  none  of  their  protection.  I  know 
the  game.  They're  afraid  we'll  earn  too  much." 

All  the  girls  clapped  their  hands. 

"  Gives  me  the  fair  sick,"  said  Ivy,  with  bitter  irony, 
"  and  before  ten  minutes  are  over  we'll  give  Cottie  the 
fair  sick.  Come  on !  let's  get  the  others  out." 

Monica  put  out  a  hand  as  Ivy  was  about  to  jump  to 
the  ground. 

"  Suppose  you're  against  us,"  said  Ivy,  looking  down 
at  her,  ferociously. 

Then,  to  her  amazement,  Monica  found  herself  say- 
ing: "  No  —  I  don't  think  so."  And  still  swayed  by  the 
feeling  that  the  girls  had  been  unfairly  treated,  she  was 
surprised  to  find  herself  surrounded  by  a  cheering  crowd, 


AMONG  THE  YAHOOS  213 

who  hustled  her  along  the  gangway  into  the  next  shop. 
It  was  a  bewildering  morning.  Other  centres  of  irrita- 
tion existed,  and  by  twelve  o'clock  almost  every  girl  had 
come  out  except  half  a  dozen  blacklegs  who,  as  Ivy  put 
it,  "  might  as  well  have  come  out  with  the  others,  for 
they'd  likely  be  in  hospital  next  day." 

Monica  thought  this  affair  lacked  ferocity,  for  she  had 
a  journalistic  idea  of  strikes:  meetings,  sombre  young 
leaders  with  burning  eyes,  red  flags.  In  fact  the  strike 
was  orderly.  It  culminated  in  an  enormous  meeting  in 
the  canteen,  which  was  at  first  addressed  by  a  few  junior 
charge  hands,  but  little  by  little  resolved  itself  into  one 
enormous  meeting  that  was  being  addressed  by  every- 
body. Then  the  disturbance  exhausted  itself,  and  two 
resolutions  were  passed  more  or  less  unanimously,  the 
opposition  being  disposed  of  by  Muriel  Penn,  who 
dragged  her  out  by  one  ear.  They  amounted  to  two 
demands,  one  for  optional  overtime,  the  other  for  the 
recognition  of  a  committee  of  shop  stewards.  Feverishly 
Monica  found  herself  elected  steward  for  her  shop.  She 
felt  curiously  proud,  rather  frightened,  for  she  did  not 
know  what  this  might  involve.  Also  she  was  disturbed 
by  the  sounds  which  the  opposition  was  making  in  the 
lavatory,  where  Muriel  Penn  and  two  others  were  con- 
verting her  under  the  cold-water  tap.  Then  nothing  hap- 
pened. One  o'clock,  two  o'clock  came,  and  still  nothing 
happened.  At  last,  at  half-past  two,  Ivy  came  back, 
looking  like  a  dove  who  had  lost  her  olive  branch,  with 
a  message  that  Mr.  Cottenham,  when  asked  to  receive 
the  shop  stewards,  had  said  he  would  see  them  damned 
first.  Monica  grew  alarmed  and  inclined  to  resign  her 
position.  She  disliked  the  idea  of  belonging  to  a  group 
that  Cottenham  would  see  damned  first.  Then  her  pride 
rose  up,  revealed  to  her  that  in  this  strike,  which  seemed 


214  BLIND  ALLEY 

foolish,  mingled  something  splendid  —  a  loyalty,  an  hon- 
est desire  for  freedom.  Calling  her  colleagues  together, 
she  informed  them  that  she  was  going  to  see  the  men. 
A  few  minutes  later,  filled  with  an  exquisite  sense  of 
treachery,  she  visited  the  boiler  house.  She  expected  to 
find  the  men  ribald  and  was  surprised  when  a  good  many 
decided  to  join  the  girls.  They  were  nice  men,  she  re- 
flected, not  larky  young  fellows,  but  good,  solid  men, 
well  over  forty.  She  could  not  understand  why  the  young 
men  were  so  cool  about  striking. 

Then  Ivy  returned  to  Cottenham,  and  having  been 
refused  admittance,  had  the  audacity  to  cling  to  the 
outer  frame  of  his  window  and  inform  him  that  the  men 
were  coming  out.  And  the  confusion  increased.  By 
four  o'clock  the  whole  factory  was  at  a  standstill,  and 
the  military  guard  began  to  patrol  with  an  air  of  threat- 
ening people  in  general  and  meditating  spectacular  at- 
tacks. But  it  was  only  at  tea  time  that,  from  Monica's 
point  of  view,  the  situation  grew  interesting.  The  com- 
mittee sat  in  the  canteen,  wondering  what  to  do  next, 
when  an  angry  hand  opened  the  door  and  Cottenham 
strode  into  the  room. 

There  was  a  pause  of  expectancy,  for  Cottenham  was 
obviously  angry.  His  was  not  bluster,  but  a  cold  anger, 
and  Monica  wondered  how  she  would  feel  if  those  blue 
eyes,  which  she  had  always  seen  so  soft,  were  ever  to 
look  at  her  like  that.  She  felt  frightened  and  small,  yet, 
for  the  first  time,  she  experienced  the  fulness  of  his 
attraction. 

"Look  here,"  said  Cottenham,  "what  do  you  think 
you're  up  to,  all  of  you?  For  one  thing,  do  you  know 
what  this  strike's  about?  I'll  bet  there's  not  one  knows. 
Though,  in  these  days  I  know  it  doesn't  matter  what  a 
strike's  about.  One  just  strikes.  Girls  who  work  seem 


AMONG  THE  YAHOOS  215 

to  need  a  change  of  manager,  just  as  girls  who  don't  work 
need  a  change  of  hats.  That's  the  story  of  the  modern 
strike.  But  I've  come  to  tell  you  that  it's  no  use  your 
sending  me  another  deputation.  I  don't  mean  to  receive 
it.  If  you've  got  a  grievance,  put  it  up  through  the 
proper  channel,  namely,  by  personal  application  to  the 
manager.  If  you  belong  to  a  union,  let  your  union  come 
to  me.  That's  all.  You  may  as  well  go  home;  you've 
wasted  your  day." 

Then,  to  her  own  surprise,  Monica  found  herself  on  her 
feet.  "  I  don't  see  it  at  all,"  she  said  quietly.  "  We're 
your  employees;  we've  elected  our  shop  stewards  to  rep- 
resent us.  We're  here  to  put  forward  a  grievance  and," 
she  faltered,  then  with  an  effort  added,  "  and  you're  here 
to  listen  to  us." 

"  I  have  nothing  to  add,  Miss  Oakley.  If  you  and  your 
fellow  stewards,  as  you  choose  to  call  yourselves,  can't 
understand  what  I've  told  you,  I  can't  supply  you  with 
the  necessary  intellectual  machine  which  will  enable  you 
to  grasp  my  meaning.  Again,  good  afternoon." 

As  soon  as  he  had  left  the  shop  the  committee  ex- 
changed stares,  and  broke  up  into  two  sections  which 
quarrelled  vigorously,  one  side  proposing  that  the  sug- 
gestion should  be  adopted,  the  other  that  everybody 
should  starve  first.  There  was  also  a  third  section  which 
quarrelled  with  both  of  them  for  reasons  which  never 
became  clear.  In  the  end  complete  confusion  prevailed, 
demonstrating  that  this  was  a  properly  constituted  com- 
mittee. But  Monica  carried  away  a  wayward  heart. 
It  was  still  a  beating  heart,  and  she  wondered  what 
external  force  had  compelled  her  to  face  and  attack  him. 
She  had  found  delight  in  this  assault;  it  was  as  if  she 
had  avenged  her  passing  enthralment,  vindicated  herself 
to  herself.  As  she  walked  home  she  thought:  "  After  all, 


216  BLIND  ALLEY 

he  hasn't  got  me."  She  was  revelling  in  the  hypocrisy 
of  woman,  setting  up  as  a  trophy  the  freedom  of  her 
mind,  against  the  inevitable  surrender  of  her  instinct, 
while  refusing  to  acknowledge  that  no  such  trophy  could 
actually  balance  the  surrender.  But  all  that  evening  she 
was  proud,  as  if  Merlin  had  sought  to  charm  her  and 
she  had  snatched  away  his  wand. 

Later  only,  when  she  tried  to  sleep  and  could  not,  did 
a  new  mood  descend  upon  her  as  a  cloud  that  blots  out 
the  moon.  She  understood  better  this  sudden  little  strike 
which  had  seemed  so  burlesque.  Of  course  it  was  a 
petulant  affair,  but  in  their  incoherent  way  the  girls 
were  standing  together  against  injustice.  They  were  sick 
of  being  protected  against  their  own  bodily  weakness; 
they  claimed  to  work  as  long  as  they  liked  and  take  the 
consequences;  they  claimed  that  no  restriction  should 
be  put  upon  women  that  was  not  also  put  upon  men. 
Violently  Monica  felt  that  this  was  right,  and  suddenly 
she  understood  the  militant  suffragettes  of  two  years 
before,  whom  she  had  thought  absurd.  They  had  not 
been  absurd;  they  had  been  heroic,  because  they  had 
suffered,  even  died,  for  an  idea.  She  parodied  a  quota- 
tion as  she  remembered  the  woman  who  was  killed  stop- 
ping a  horse  at  the  Derby :  "  It  is  sometimes  expedient 
that  a  woman  should  die  before  the  people." 

Then  she  thought  of  Cottenham;  she  knew  he  must 
be  very  angry  with  her.  She  supposed  that  he  would  not 
care  for  her  any  more.  How  cruel  it  all  was!  And  yet 
she  could  not  stop.  She  knew  that  next  day  she  must 
go  with  her  fellow  stewards  and  face  him  again,  until  his 
will  or  their  will  was  broken.  It  was  agony  to  think 
that  this  industrial  struggle  must  resemble  their  own 
impulses;  for  the  first  time  she  saw  that  the  time  must 
come  when  his  desire  must  be  repulsed  or  her  own  resist- 


AMONG  THE  YAHOOS  217 

ance  bent  —  bent  by  her  own  weakness.  She  wept  a  little, 
and  when  at  last  she  felt  sleepy,  she  had  to  turn  her  pillow 
over  because  one  side  was  wet  with  tears. 

The  three  days  that  followed  were  all  confusion.  The 
stewards,  gaining  purposefulness  from  their  own  activity, 
insisted  on  attending  the  factory,  where  they  knitted  and 
ate  in  the  dirty  area,  and  struggled  against  a  new,  dan- 
gerous current,  namely  boredom.  This  was  their  first 
strike,  and  if  only  they  had  been  ridden  down  by  cavalry 
they  would  have  felt  that  it  was  all  right,  but  the  man- 
agement took  no  notice  of  them. 

Irvine  had  many  interviews  with  Cottenham. 

"  We  can't  exactly  give  in,"  said  the  Manager. 

"  No,  of  course  not,"  said  Cottenham.  "  If  they  don't 
all  go  back  on  Monday  morning,  we'll  close  the  factory 
until  we  can  get  a  new  lot  of  labour.  We'll  import  a 
thousand  Irish  girls  and  their  priests  to  tell  them  they'll 
go  to  hell  if  they  don't  put  up  the  output." 

Irvine  shook  his  head.  "  No,  it  wouldn't  do.  The 
Ministry  wouldn't  let  us:  you'd  have  the  Workers'  Union 
calling  out  the  girls  all  over  the  country." 

"  Well,  I  won't  see  the  stewards,"  said  Cottenham. 

"  Oh,  of  course  not,"  said  Irvine.  "  Still,  one  might 
compromise." 

And  a  compromise  came  suddenly.  It  was  a,  typically 
Irvinian  compromise.  The  manager  sent  a  message  to 
the  effect  that  he  couldn't  see  the  shop  stewards'  com- 
mittee, but  he  could  see  individual  stewards.  As  the 
composition  of  the  committee  was  vague,  it  found  itself 
in  conference  to  elect  representatives  who  were  not  recog- 
nised. They  met  a  new  Cottenham,  less  aggressive  be- 
cause he  thought  he  was  getting  his  own  way.  After  he 
had  made  a  rather  vague  statement  to  explain  once  more 
why  he  could  not  meet  the  shop  stewards,  Monica  sud- 


218  BLIND  ALLEY 

denly  remembered  his  syndicalist  speeches.  She  was 
about  to  cry  out:  "  But  you  believe  in  this  sort  of  thing!  " 
then  suddenly  grew  older  as  she  understood  that  few 
men  believe  in  anything  except  for  others.  And  she  told 
herself:  "Can  I  use  the  knowledge  I  acquired  in  a  way 
I  could  not  reveal?  Would  it  be  fair?  "  To  a  girl  of 
her  kind  the  idea  of  fairness  was  so  paralysing  that  she 
took  no  part  in  the  conference:  she  belonged  to  a  class 
for  whom  fairness  consists  in  abstaining  from  doing  things 
rather  than  in  doing  them.  So,  a  little  later,  she  was 
surprised  to  find  that  the  conference  had  compromised, 
again  in  an  Irvinian  way: 

"  Well,"  said  Irvine,  rubbing  his  hands  vigorously, 
"  all's  well.  You  agree  that  there  shall  be  no  optional 
overtime,  but  we  lengthen  the  shift  to  ten  hours  and  give 
you  the  option  of  working  less." 

There  was  a  great  deal  of  cheering,  and  Ivy  Badger, 
forgetting  her  august  position,  leapt  on  the  table  and 
bellowed:  "  Three  cheers  for  old  Cottie!  "  and  would  all 
the  ladies  join  'er  in  the  well-known  hymn:  "  For  Cott's 
a  jolly  good  fellow." 

At  half-past  six  Monica  flung  herself  on  her  bed.  She 
had  defied  the  man  whom  perhaps  she  loved,  and  this 
uncertainty  made  the  results  of  her  defiance  complex: 
if  they  quarrelled  she  would  not  feel  justified  in  her 
unhappiness.  She  wondered  even  whether  she  was  un- 
happy because  all  through  the  strike  he  had  not  been 
near  Castle  Hill.  Every  night,  as  she  went  in,  she  had 
stopped  for  a  moment  on  the  steps,  fearing  and  hoping 
that  he  would  emerge  from  the  shadow  of  the  Park. 
But  he  did  not  come.  Did  he  never  mean  to  come  again? 
It  would  be  better  if  he  did  not.  But  he  must  come. 
For  some  minutes  she  lay  without  thoughts,  then  sprang 
up.  No,  she  could  bear  it  no  more.  If  she  must  suffer, 


AMONG  THE  YAHOOS  219 

then  let  it  not  be  between  walls.  In  that  moment,  like 
the  sick  king,  she  ached  for  the  sea,  and  thought  she 
might  be  healed  if,  for  a  moment,  she  could  feel  the  soft 
marsh  winds,  hear  the  starlings  rise  from  Winchelsea 
Copse,  making  the  sound  of  a  sail  that  fills  in  the  breeze. 
She  ran  downstairs,  hatless ;  she  would  go  to  the  Medway ; 
at  least  that  was  water.  But  as  the  door  closed  behind 
her  and  she  stared  at  the  high,  tarnished  moon,  like  a 
pan  of  copper  in  a  peacock-blue  sky,  she  found  that  the 
old  expectancy  had  come  upon  her.  She  stood  upon  the 
steps  and  gazed  at  the  black  Park,  the  pavement  gilt  by 
the  blood-red  moon.  For  a  long  time  she  waited,  waited 
with  an  increasing  security  and  a  dumb  acquiescence. 
She  was  not  at  all  surprised  when  the  figure  of  a  man 
detached  itself  from  the  blackness  and  ran  towards  her. 

"  Open  the  door,  quick,"  he  said,  as  he  seized  her  by 
the  wrist.  "  Quick,  we'll  be  seen." 

With  trembling  fingers  she  opened  the  door.  As  he 
followed  up  the  stairs  she  ached  with  fear.  Perhaps 
some  one  had  heard.  What  would  they  think? 

Then  they  were  face  to  face  in  her  sitting  room  where 
the  lamp  still  burned.  They  stared  at  each  other  with 
unblinking  eyes,  as  if  still  testing  their  strength,  and  she 
nerved  herself  to  bear  his  reproaches.  He  would  call 
her  disloyal;  he  could  convince  her  of  her  own  folly;  he 
would  throw  her  class  up  at  her  and  make  a  weapon  of 
her  recreancy.  But  Cottenham  did  nothing  of  the  kind. 
He  stepped  forward,  seized  her  by  the  shoulders  and 
crushed  her  to  him  with  a  reckless  brutality  that  was 
terrible  and  exquisite.  Her  mind  was  ready,  bent  as  a 
steel  spring,  but  she  had  forgotten  her  sensations;  sur- 
prised by  the  embrace,  her  marshalled  arguments  were 
stifled  in  fumous  pall  of  her  physical  emotion.  And  Cot- 
tenham, with  that  deep  intuition  that  is  powerful  in  ter- 


220  BLIND  ALLEY 

rorism  and  narcotic  in  charm,  loaded  her  with  caresses 
that  bewildered  and  distracted  her,  that  awoke  responses 
she  thought  herself  incapable  of,  that  sickened  her  by 
oversweetness,  stimulated  her  to  rivalry.  At  last,  with 
a.  long,  shuddering  sigh,  she  flung  her  arms  about  his 
neck,  and  her  face  was  wet  with  tears ;  her  fate  hung  over 
her  as  the  wings  of  a  condor  darkening  the  valley;  she 
stood,  she  felt,  stark  and  disarmed  among  the  ruins  of 
her  will. 

But  as  her  being  surrendered  she  felt  the  man  stiffen 
and  withdraw ;  under  her  drooping  lids  she  saw  a  change 
come  over  that  face  where  a  second  before  the  swollen, 
passionate  veins  had  stood  out.  It  grew  mask^like,  then 
uncertain,  as  if  he  shrank  from  his  own  victory,  feared 
to  take  its  spoils.  She  did  not  understand,  and  yet  she 
felt  this  sudden  fear  in  him;  confusedly  she  guessed  that 
she  was  offering  him  all  that  he  wanted,  more  than  he 
dared  take.  So,  suddenly,  she  broke  away,  and  flinging 
herself  upon  the  couch  uncontrollably  wept.  After  a 
while  he  awkwardly  came  and  stood  beside  her,  caressed 
her  hair  as  if  he  were  asking  her  to  forgive  him  for  not 
having  dared.  At  last  she  looked  at  him  with  wet  eyes, 
so  distraught  that  she  did  not  even  wonder  whether  her 
eyes  were  red  or  if  her  nose  was  swollen,  without  caring 
whether  she  were  ugly. 

"  Go  away,"  she  murmured.  "  No,  Frank,  I'm  not 
angry.  But  do  go  now." 

He  went,  and  there  was  apology  even  in  his  walk.  As 
he  went  down  the  stairs  he  thought:  "  And  I  did  not 
even  leave  my  coat  in  her  grasp." 

Monica  did  not  sleep  that  night.  She  was  growing 
old  with  a  lucid  swiftness  that  appalled  her.  She  un- 
derstood the  drifting  doom  that  was  laid  on  them, 
the  incapacity  to  part,  the  incapacity  to  dare  perils 


AMONG  THE  YAHOOS 

which  neither*  could  face  because  neither  cared  enough, 
the  endless  shock  of  ungratified  desires  which  must 
always  lie  between  them,  not  only  because  he  could  not 
be  her  husband,  but  because  the  war  which  had  seized 
them  both,  their  energy,  their  time,  which  locked 
them  in  a  given  place,  deprived  them  of  material 
time  to  give  nobility  to  any  satisfaction  they  might 
steal. 

"  There's  no  way  out,"  thought  Monica.  "  It  can't  go 
on.  And  it  can't  alter.  We  can't  even  take  in  freedom 
a  day  of  each  other.  It  can't  go  on." 

Next  morning,  as  the  factory  gates  opened,  Monica 
entered  the  unit  foreman's  office  and  obtained  her  imme- 
diate release  on  the  plea  that  her  mother  was  very  ill. 
Half  an  hour  later  she  was  in  the  train. 

She  could  hardly  understand  herself.  In  that  railway 
carriage,  all  alone,  she  was  so  unhappy  when  she  thought 
of  happiness  foregone,  and  yet  immensely  relieved.  She 
had  escaped  herself.  With  a  pang  she  remembered  that 
Cottenham  had  said:  "Nothing's  as  good  as  falling  in 
love  except  falling  out."  Yes,  she  had  fallen  out  of  love. 
Her  literal  mind  made  her  think:  "  It  leaves  a  gap,  some- 
how, like  a  tooth."  But,  feeling  tears  near,  she  sought 
for  something  with  which  to  fill  that  gap:  she  would 
devote  herself  to  her  father.  She  never  ought  to  have 
left  him.  He  loved  her  and  needed  her,  and  her  mother 
could  not  be  to  him  quite  what  she  was.  Nor  Louise 
either.  An  exquisite  sense  of  sacrifice  invaded  her;  she 
almost  believed  that  she  was  giving  up  love  because  her 
old  father  needed  her  companionship.  It  was  volup- 
tuous. 

A  few  nights  later,  as  she  stood  before  the  cheval  glass, 
a  tall,  thin  figure  with  pale  mauve  auras  round  her  grey 
eyes,  in  her  gown  that  fell  in  soft  folds  of  oyster-grey 


222  BLIND  ALLEY 

chiffon,  she  played  for  a  moment  with  her  chatelaine  of 
silver  and  turquoise. 

"  Strange  old  Monica,"  she  thought,  "  strange  new 
Monica."  Or  rather,  was  she  not  something  between 
new  and  old?  Her  skin  had  lost  its  old  dead  pallor,  and 
yet  the  T.  N.  T.  stain  was  beginning  to  fade  from  deep 
yellow  into  a  creaminess  that  insensibly  blended  with 
the  whiteness  of  her  breast. 

The  fading  of  that  colour  symbolised  the  fading  of  that 
memory  which,  with  daily  fainter  hands,  still  gripped 
at  her  heart. 

IX 

"  So,"  Sylvia  reflected,  "  peace  didn't  come  this  Christ- 
mas after  all!  "  For  a  moment  her  mind  dwelt  on  the 
entertainment  Knapenden  Place  had  just  given  to  the 
wounded.  Mother  had  been  very  much  in  it,  trying  to 
buck  up  the  poor  chaps ;  one  of  them  had  told  her  that  he 
was  willing  to  go  back  but  wasn't  in  a  hurry.  Sylvia 
smiled:  mother  was  so  dead  keen.  Not  like  father;  it 
seemed  to  upset  him.  Silly !  of  course  men  had  to  fight. 
"  It  had  been  rather  fun,"  she  thought,  and  for  a  moment 
remembered  the  boxing  film  which  had  delighted  the  men ; 
what  a  lamb  Bombardier  Wells  was!  She  had  taken  to 
one  of  the  wounded,  too,  a  man  with  no  legs.  Such  a 
sport!  She  wondered  what  the  stumps  looked  like,  a  hor- 
ribly interesting  idea.  Yes,  the  war  wasn't  so  bad. 

Christmas,  1916!  Over  two  years!  She  wondered 
whether  next  year  would  see  the  end.  Then  she  read  over 
again  a  letter  from  March,  one  of  his  queer,  frightened, 
desirous  letters.  Strange  boy !  She  thought  of  other  men 
who  were  amusing  her  in  town,  an  airman,  and  a  fearfully 
dashing  Italian  officer.  Good  fun,  both  of  them.  But 


AMONG  THE  YAHOOS  223 

the  shrinking  of  March  attracted  her  more.  He  had  not 
yet  told  her  that  he  loved  her,  but  in  every  letter  he  spoke 
of  her  husband,  enviously,  with  a  hint  of  fear,  as  if  telling 
her  that  Jervaulx  stood  between  him  and  his  object.  She 
bared  her  little  sharp  teeth.  It  was  good  to  be  loved  in 
that  racked  way.  A  few  nights  ago  the  Italian  officer 
had  kissed  her  in  a  taxi  as  he  drove  her  home.  What  a 
fight  that  had  been!  She  did  not  dislike  him  for  it. 
But  still  her  thoughts  turned  to  the  slim,  shy  boy,  and  she 
remembered  that  week-end  in  May  when  she  dragged 
down  to  her  lips  the  handsome  head,  as  one  pulls  down  the 
branch  of  a  magnolia  to  bury  one's  face  in  the  soft, 
scented  flesh  of  its  bloom. 


X 

SIR  HUGH  walked  along  Pall  Mall.  A  hard,  frosty, 
January  day;  the  sharp  wind  that  swept  the  grit  on  the 
dry,  zinc-like  pavements  made  him  retract  within  him- 
self, and  the  smooth  grey  sky  that  hung  low  over  his  head 
depressed  him.  London  was  losing  its  colour,  for  now 
the  afternoon  papers  were  no  longer  allowed  to  show 
placards.  And  he  was  pleasantly  conscious  of  his  self- 
consciousness.  He  thought :  "  Anatole  France  is  right ; 
meditation  is  a  peaceful  orgy.  It's  natural  enough. 
Wasn't  it  Descartes  said:  '  I  think,  therefore  I  am? '  But 
after  all  I  am  only  a  chimpanzee  brought  up-to-date  by 
time.  Anatole  is  right;  I  am  merely  a  meditative  chim- 
panzee." 

These  hard  grey  streets  of  London  formed  an  incredible 
contrast  to  the  warm  coloured  scene  he  had  just  left, 
Mrs.  Van  Oedelem's  reception  on  the  occasion  of  her 
daughter's  marriage  with  David  Marchmont.  Such  a 
noisy  affair,  such  a  crowd,  London  deprived  of  its  ordi- 


224  BLIND  ALLEY 

nary  pleasures,  and  making  sport  of  a  wedding;  most  of 
the  Belgian  Legation,  some  Foreign  Office  men,  lots  of 
uniforms,  smart  girls  got  up  as  Red  Cross  nurses  (so 
much  more  becomingly  clad  than  the  V.  A.  D.'s) ,  one  or 
two  as  land  girls,  very  earnest  all  of  them,  but  obviously 
acting  in  private  theatricals.  "  The  theatre  of  war,  of 
course,"  thought  Sir  Hugh  with  tender  irony.  It  all  felt 
so  artificial.  Even  the  grim  darkness  of  Mr.  Vander- 
velde  failed  to  solidify  a  scene  where  Mr.  Balfour,  benev- 
olent, negligent,  amiable,  short-sighted,  circled  the  groups, 
throwing  out  an  aura  of  infantine  satisfaction,  and  of 
wondering  what  it  was  all  about. 

At  the  corner  of  Waterloo  Place  Sir  Hugh  paused  as 
cars,  one  after  the  other,  veered  out  of  Pall  Mall  towards 
the  north ;  his  eyes  registered  a  picture  that  almost  at  once 
vanished.  He  had  a  vision  of  Sylvia  in  her  A.  S.  C. 
uniform.  She  was  driving  a  car  with  large  plate-glass 
windows,  in  which  sat  a  young  officer.  Odd!  He  was 
sure  it  was  Sylvia,  with  the  artistic  hat  dragged  over  the 
red  hair,  the  new  Sylvia,  Private  Jervaulx,  A.  S.  C.,  M.  T., 
in  a  fancy  stock,  and  an  expensive  non-regulation  coat 
and  skirt  cut  in  officer's  khaki.  On  duty  of  course.  Some 
War  Office  man,  Sir  Hugh  supposed,  but  the  sight  dis- 
contented him.  When  Sylvia  joined  up  he  had  associ- 
ated her  with  big  W.  D.  lorries,  with  purposeful  cars 
careering  through  slummy  roads,  laden  with  shell  or 
explosives.  To  see  her  drive  a  little  man  in  a  large  car  — 
such  a  polished  car,  such  a  polished  driver  —  private  the- 
atricals again.  Also  this  familiarity  between  his  daugh- 
ter and  an  unknown  man  offended  his  puritanism.  Joy 
riding! 

Then  he  chid  himself:  "  Don't  be  Victorian,  old  fellow. 
That's  an  1860  idea.  Times  have  changed."  Then  Sir 
Hugh  began  to  regret  that  times  should  change.  He  was 


AMONG  THE  YAHOOS  225 

getting  old;  to  see  his  period  evanesce  was  a  little  like 
seeing  the  grey  spread  through  the  hair  of  a  loved  woman. 
He  thought:  "When  one  cares  for  a  woman,  one  always 
thinks  of  her  at  the  age  when  one  first  met  her:  it  takes 
years  to  make  one  realise  that  she  has  grown  older.  I 
suppose  it's  like  that  with  one's  period.  It  feels  like  1895, 
and  yet  it  isn't  1895."  Vaguely  he  realised  that  his  world 
was  disappearing,  that  the  new  woman  was  getting  still 
newer,  curt,  capable,  independent.  What  would  she  be 
up  to  after  the  war  —  when  she  had  found  out  that  she 
was  fit  for  any  trade  —  able  to  resist  men?  "  A  grand 
rumpus,  that's  what  they  were  in  for."  That  day  he  did 
not  like  the  idea  of  a  rumpus,  which  meant  that  he  was 
growing  old. 

Everything  told  him  that  he  was  growing  old.  Not 
only  was  he  afraid  of  the  change  in  woman,  but  his  steady 
old  banker's  mind  pondered  the  coming  War  Loan,  for 
which  Mr.  Bonar  Law  wanted  a  thousand  millions.  A 
thousand  millions!  Though  the  daily  expenditure  had 
already  reached  five  millions,  the  figures  shocked  Sir 
Hugh.  This  piling  up  of  debt  bewildered  him:  he  still 
visualised  wealth  as  land ;  he  had  no  proper  conception  of 
the  capacities  of  industry,  of  the  possibilities  of  trade. 
He  did  not  know  the  North  Country  well,  and  so  there 
arose  in  him  no  hope  that  Britain  would  catch  up  these 
enormous  liabilities.  He  saw  her  sinking  deeper  and 
deeper  into  debt,  and  his  pessimism  extended  to  Germany, 
for  the  latter's  industrial  powers  were  also  half  foreign 
to  him.  "  If  we  win,"  he  thought,  "  it's  all  very  well 
saying  she'll  pay.  Can  she  pay?  " 

But  behind  these  uncertainties  lay  something  that  dis- 
turbed him  still  more:  other  people  thought  it  was  all 
right,  young  men  in  the  Treasury,  hustling  business  men 
on  the  Board  of  Control.  They  couldn't  be  wrong,  all  of 


BLIND   ALLEY 

them.  They  made  money;  they  must  have  brains.  He 
felt  left  behind  in  another  period. 

Stephen's  last  letter  had  upset  him,  too :  Quin  had  been 
killed  at  Beaumont  Hamel,  and  this  seemed  to  have 
hardened  Stephen.  "  Quin's  gone  West,"  he  wrote.  "  They 
got  him  as  he  was  coming  back  from  the  0.  Pip.  Old 
Quin's  gone.  Doesn't  matter  if  it's  to  heaven  or  hell,  it'll 
be  an  improvement.  Damn  the  world!  I  hope  to  have  a 
hand  in  blowing  it  up  when  this  job's  done." 

Later,  at  his  club,  he  found  no  greater  assurance  as  he 
joined  the  little  group  which  by  the  fireplace  awaits  din- 
ner time.  They  were  talking  about  Wilson. 

"  He's  a  true  Christian,"  said  a  fat  man  whom  Sir  Hugh 
did  not  know.  "  Always  ready  to  turn  the  other  ship  to 
the  U-boat." 

The  others  laughed,  and  Sir  Hugh  gladly  shook  hands 
with  Billy  Bridge,  his  cousin,  who  had  just  come  in,  quiet 
and  grey.  The  men  were  still  talking. 

"  You've  heard  his  latest  stunt,"  said  another.  "  Peace 
without  victory.  That'd  be  a  pretty  ending  to  a  war  like 
this.  Peace  without  victory!  "  he  repeated  scornfully. 
"  I  wonder  when  Wilson  will  be  tired  of  seeing  women 
and  children  drowned:  if  a  Zepp  were  to  drop  a  bomb  on 
him  we'd  hear  less  about  peace  without  victory." 

"  Do  you  think  it's  as  personal  as  all  that?  "  asked  Sir 
Hugh.  They  all  stared  at  him.  "  I  mean,  don't  you  think 
Wilson  is  working  in  a  different  —  field  of  ideas,  that 
what  he  wants  is  a  result  so  indecisive  that  when  we  make 
peace  everybody  will  realise  that  war  doesn't  profit  a 
nation?  " 

"  Well,  if  that's  his  idea,"  said  the  fat  man,  "  it  isn't 
ours.  We  haven't  gone  into  this  war  for  high-falutin' 
reasons.  We've  gone  into  it  to  lick  Germany." 

"  And  when  you've  licked  Germany?  " 


AMONG  THE   YAHOOS 

"  How  do  you  mean?  " 

"  Well,  what  next?  "  said  Sir  Hugh.  "  What  shall  we 
do  then?  Make  ready  for  another  war?  Go  on  arming, 
and  struggling,  and  scheming,  world  without  end?  " 

"  Certainly  not,"  said  the  other  man.  "  By  the  time 
we've  won  this  war  Germany  will  have  had  such  a  sick- 
ener of  it  that  she'll  never  go  to  war  again.  She's  got  to 
suffer  and  she's  got  to  pay,  before  she  changes  her  mind. 
That's  why  we  want  a  proper  blockade,  not  Asquith's 
penny  toy  blockade,  but  the  real  thing.  They  talk  of 
women  and  children!  It's  a  lot  they  care  about  ours. 
We've  got  to  get  them  to  the  point  where  there's  hardly 
a  German  under  forty  who's  not  either  dead,  blind  or 
crippled,  when  the  civilians  are  going  about  dressed  in 
potato  sacks,  and  rags  tied  round  their  feet  instead  of 
boots.  I'm  no  harder-hearted  than  anybody,  but  if  we 
can  get  Germany  down  so  that  a  million  babies  cry  for 
milk  and  can't  get  it,  and  when  so  many  of  them  die  of 
cold  that  they  have  to  shovel  them  in  lumps  into  the  same 
grave,  then  Germany'll  have  learnt  her  lesson." 

There  was  silence.  Everybody  agreed,  but  everybody 
disliked  having  this  said.  An  immense  repulsion  rose  in 
Sir  Hugh. 

"  Ye  —  s,  I  see,"  he  said  coldly.  "  But  I  suppose  it's 
quite  clear  that  nobody  else  ever  made  a  war  except  Ger- 
many?—  that  there  are  no  jingoes  in  France  and  in 
Japan?  I  suppose  Mr.  Leo  Maxse,  and  the  Navy  Lea- 
guers, and  Mr.  Hughes  are  all  sucking  doves?  I  suppose 
we  keep  a  fleet  as  a  little  girl  keeps  a  doll's  house,  and 
that  the  British  Empire  came  together  by  itself,  drawn 
by  our  good  government?  Funny!  I  suppose  we  used 
our  fighting  forces  to  take  India  and  Canada  from  the 
French?  I  suppose  we  didn't  really  want  Thibet  and 
half  Persia  when  we  struck  a  bargain  with  the  amiable 


228  BLIND  ALLEY 

Tsar  ten  years  ago,  and  handed  the  other  half  of  Persia 
to  his  gentle  rule?  " 

Then  Billy  Bridge  gave  his  little  harsh  laugh.  Sir 
Hugh  followed  him  into  a  corner,  while  the  men  drew 
closer  round  the  fireplace.  He  caught  the  word  "  paci- 
fist." 

For  a  moment  Bridge  looked  at  him  with  a  humorous 
glint  in  his  hard  eyes.  Sir  Hugh's  cousin  was  a  very 
good-looking,  clean-shaven  man  of  about  fifty,  tall, 
aloofly  elegant.  He  was  a  barrister,  and  could  be  taken 
for  nothing  else. 

"  I  say,  old  chap,"  he  remarked,  "  you're  going  strong, 
you  know.  Those  fellows  think  you're  a  pacifist." 

"  They  make  me  sick,"  said  Sir  Hugh  gloomily. 

"  Of  course  they  make  you  sick.  All  humanity  makes 
one  sick.  In  war  time  especially,  one  feels  like  Byron: 
one  hates  most  people  and  dislikes  the  others.  But  really 
you  mustn't  talk  like  this.  In  war  time  one  sets  up  a  sort 
of  fiction  that  everything  one  does  is  right,  and  that 
everything  one's  allies  do  is  right,  and  one's  blameless, 
and  injured,  and  all  that  sort  of  tosh,  and  the  enemies  are 
just  vile." 

"  It's  not  true,"  said  Sir  Hugh. 

Bridge  smiled.  "  My  dear  fellow,  if  both  sides  knew 
each  other's  point  of  view  they  wouldn't  hate  each  other, 
and  then  they  wouldn't  fight." 

"  Billy,  do  you  want  them  to  fight?  " 

The  barrister  smiled.  "  Want  them  to  fight?  I  don't 
care.  It's  their  nature.  Like  Irish  terriers.  I  don't  say 
my  country's  right  or  wrong;  I  don't  think  any  country 
can  be  right  or  wrong.  But  if  my  country's  going  into  a 
dog-fight,  I  may  as  well  see  to  it  that  my  dog  wins." 

Sir  Hugh  sighed.  "  I  don't  know  what's  the  matter 
with  me.  I  didn't  know  I  had  things  like  that  in  my  mind, 


AMONG  THE  YAHOOS 

but  all  this  hating  and  all  this  lying  about  the  other  side, 
and  all  this  bragging  about  our  beastly  selves  —  it  seems 
to  stir  up.  It's  rather  rotten  of  me,  I  suppose,  with 
Roumania  cracking  up,  and  we're  doing  no  good  on  the 
Somme  either.  But  I  can't  help  it." 

His  cousin  did  not  reply  directly.    Then,  irrelevantly, 
he  said:  "  Do  you  know  that  Angus  Cawston  has  joined 
the  Drug  Control  Office?  " 
"  Oh!  what  is  he  doing?" 

"  He's  a  director  of  something.    Antiseptics,  I  think." 

"  What  ever  does  old  Angus  know  about  antiseptics?  " 

"  Quite  enough  for  a  Government  department.     Dear 

old  Angus!    He  is  enjoying  it.    I  told  him  he'd  been 

scenting  his  handkerchief  with  lysol  the  other  day,  and, 

would  you  believe  it,  I  think  he  does." 

They  laughed,  and  Sir  Hugh  did  not  that  day  recover 
his  passionate  moment.  Indeed,  in  the  train  next  morn- 
ing, he  was  depressed  rather  than  indignant.  Everybody 
seemed  depressed.  A  farmer,  who  talked  to  him  at  Ash- 
ford  while  they  waited  by  the  Hastings  train,  growled  and 
snarled  at  the  Government  which  had  just  fixed  the  price 
of  wheat  and  potatoes.  He,  too,  was  hating.  Then  ten 
men,  headed  by  a  corporal,  marched  on  to  the  platform  in 
full  kit.  They  wore  steel  helmets.  Their  lines,  so  neat 
and  close,  their  air  of  compression  and  perfect  fitness  for 
their  work,  seemed  to  Sir  Hugh  beautiful.  Quick  and 
sharp  they  clanked  by  him,  grim  under  their  brown  tin 
hats.  Figures  of  romance!  But  marionettes  upon  a 
string  twitched  by  an  excess  profiteer. 

XI 

SHE  was  gone.  Cottenham  wondered  why  he  felt  re- 
lief. It  hurt  him  that  Monica  should  have  gone  like  this, 
without  saying  good-bye.  Yet  it  was  a  tribute  to  his 


230  BLIND  ALLEY 

attraction  for  her.  No  doubt  she  had  not  trusted  herself 
to  say  good-bye  to  him.  Gone!  He  sneered  at  himself: 
"  I  suppose  I  ought  to  feel  that  she's  taken  a  bit  of  my 
heart  away  with  her.  But  though  I  wish  she  hadn't  gone, 
I  suppose  I'm  glad  she  has.  If  she'd  stayed  ..."  He 
did  not  know  what  would  have  happened  if  she  had 
stayed.  Passionate  visions  formed  in  his  mind,  and  then 
his  sense  of  loss  grew  more  precise.  He  remembered  little 
things,  how  the  red-brown  hair  curled  away  behind  her 
ears,  the  slow  droop  of  her  eyelids,  and  the  laxness  of  her 
when  he  caressed  her.  He  clenched  his  hands  in  an 
ecstacy  of  imaginative  possession.  How  exquisite  she 
would  have  been,  all  surrendered,  so  languid,  and  fearful, 
and  white!  He  bit  his  lips  as  he  realised  his  baulked 
desire.  He  played  some  Debussy,  but  "  Masques  "  was 
too  light,  and  he  found  Bach  fail  him.  How  he  hated 
fugues  that  night.  Beastly  old  mathematician!  Bach 
ought  to  have  been  a  Cambridge  don.  It  was  by  chance 
he  found  the  music  he  needed,  a  short  piece  which  he 
played  over  and  over  again  until  at  last  Julia  knocked  at 
the  door. 

"Frank!  "  she  cried,  "  could  you  possibly  play  some- 
thing else?  You've  been  playing  that  over  and  over 
again  for  half  an  hour.  It  gives  me  the  creeps.  What  is 
it?" 

His  fingers  still  lingered  on  the  slow  notes  that  are  un- 
earthly, blue  notes  and  green  ones.  He  said:  "  It's  '  Gal- 
lows.' Raval,  you  know."  He  went  on  playing. 

"  Don't  for  heaven's  sake,  don't!  "  cried  Julia.  "  What's 
the  matter  with  you?  " 

Without  answering  he  played  again  the  short  piece 
where  a  cold  little  wind  sports  through  the  dead  man's 
hair,  slowly  raising  one  by  one  each  dry  lock  on  the  head 
with  staring  eyes  that  the  crows  have  half  picked  out, 


AMONG  THE   YAHOOS  231 

while  the  wise,  detached  spider  weaves  a  silken  stock 
about  the  corpse's  drawn  neck. 

Then,  suddenly,  he  jumped  up  and  with  a  gesture  of 
appeal  flung  himself  into  Julia's  long  arms.  He  wanted 
to  pillow  his  head  upon  that  dark  breast,  upon  any 
breast.  Without  understanding  anything  except  that  he 
was  unhappy,  Julia  drew  him  close  and  stroked  the  hair 
where  it  grew  hard  and  springy  upon  his  neck. 

"  Come  along,"  he  said  suddenly,  "  let's  go  and  have  a 
look  at  Rupert." 

Rupert  helped  him  a  great  deal  in  those  months.  The 
fat  baby  held  for  him  an  appeal  that  Lucretia  and  Diana 
had  not.  It  was  his  son.  It  was  himself.  It  was  his 
vanity  of  survival.  So  an  easier  home  life  formed  about 
him.  He  sat  with  Julia  before  dinner  now,  criticising  her 
frocks,  and  invariably  brought  back  the  Evening  Stand- 
ard, so  that  she  should  not  miss  her  daily  dose  of  Cori- 
sande.  Everything  conspired  to  help  him:  his  work 
became  more  exacting  as  the  orders  increased,  as  labour 
grew  more  restless  and  needed  to  be  soothed;  Julia,  better 
assured  that  he  loved  her,  loved  him  more;  Rupert  re- 
turned his  passion  and  slept  in  his  arms  in  soft,  scented 
abandonment.  Yet,  all  through,  ran  an  aching  sense  of 
need.  It  was  as  if  he  had  lost  adventure,  being  precipi- 
tated from  Romantic  Crag  into  Everyday  Valley.  He 
lay  in  the  grasp  of  everlasting  hope. 

Unable  to  suffer  any  more  this  sense  of  emptiness,  he 
went  up  to  London  to  see  his  friend  Lawford,  whom  he 
hated  and  loved,  because  Lawford  had  always  done  every- 
thing better  than  he  had,  let  him  feel  it,  yet  compelled 
him  to  admire  him.  He  told  him  the  whole  story,  to 
which  Lawford  merely  replied: 

"Drop  it.  You'll  drop  it  when  you've  done  it;  why 
not  drop  it  before?  A  girl  of  that  kind,  unless  she  were 


BLIND   ALLEY 

married,  of  course,  will  only  get  you  into  an  awful  mess. 
If  you  want  some  fun  why  don't  you  run  a  jolly  little  girl 
in  town?  But  as  for  this  —  drop  it." 

Cottenham  truthfully  replied:  "  Drop  it,  that's  all  very 
well,  but  somehow  it's  not  dropping  me" 

XII 

IT  was  indeed  Sylvia  whom  Sir  Hugh  had  glimpsed, 
driving  an  unknown  officer  up  Waterloo  Place.  The  big 
car  found  its  way  through  the  traffic  rather  too  fast,  as 
if  guided  by  an  impatient  hand.  Contemptuous  of  all 
speed  limits  it  honked  and  whizzed  round  Regent's  Park, 
along  the  Finchley  Road,  pulling  up  with  a  jerk  near 
Wembley  Park.  Sylvia  turned  towards  the  open  window 
and  said: 

"  You  can  come  and  sit  next  to  me  now,  if  you  like." 
With  a  response  in  which  lay  a  little  anxiety,  Oliver 
March  walked  along  the  footboard  and  got  into  the 
vacant  seat.  As  he  sat  down,  the  car  leapt  forward, 
faster  than  ever.  Sylvia's  eyes  were  intent  upon  the 
road,  as  if  she  were  careless  of  her  passenger.  For  a 
moment  the  young  soldier  absorbed  himself  in  the  con- 
templation of  her  profile,  the  steady  brown  eye,  the  short, 
well-moulded,  rather  fleshy  nose,  and  the  red-salved  lips 
that  pouted  above  the  blunt  chin.  She  was  all  desirable 
and  yet  apart,  too  big,  too  strong;  her  heavy  gauntleted 
hands  held  the  steering  wheel  with  an  air  of  certitude,  as 
she  might  hold  the  steering  wheel  of  her  own  life.  As 
she  craned  forward,  looking  ahead  upon  the  frozen  white 
road,  he  thought  of  a  Roman  charioteer  driving  to  — 
he  did  not  like  to  think  where,  though  his  heart  beat  as 
he  realised  that  some  bourne  they  must  attain,  some 
Circean  isle  where  men  might  be  muted  into  beasts,  or  a 


AMONG  THE  YAHOOS  233 

coast  more  glamorous  still  where  a  Dido  would  sue  to  an 
Aeneas  without  wisdom.  This  frightened  him  so  that  he 
insisted  upon  talking.  Did  she  like  the  A.  S.  C.?  Were 
her  hours  very  long?  What  sort  of  jobs  did  she  come  in 
for?  Oh?  Driving  old  generals  mostly?  Cushy!  Ever 
thought  of  flying?  Exciting  rather.  Hadn't  been  up? 
What  it  felt  like?  Oh,  well,  at  the  start,  as  if  you  were 
leaving  your  boots  behind.  He  began  to  describe  his 
flight,  to  which  Sylvia  answered  only:  "  Very  interesting, 
but  not  for  me ;  it's  too  risky." 

"  Too  risky !  "  said  the  young  man  incredulously. 
"  Why,  I'd  have  thought  you'd  have  been  just  the  girl  to 
take  a  risk." 

"  No,"  said  Sylvia  with  a  smile  that  uncovered  her  lit- 
tle sharp  teeth.  "  Perhaps  I'll  fly  when  I'm  forty,  but 
life's  too  interesting  now  to  risk  it  for  a  short  sensation." 

He  did  not  reply.  He  understood  her.  After  a  mo- 
ment he  began  to  talk  of  his  last  billet,  of  a  humorous 
private  who  insisted  on  consulting  him  as  to  what  he 
should  do,  the  man  having  unfortunately  engaged  him- 
self to  two  girls;  he  even  tried  to  talk  about  what  was 
on  at  the  theatres. 

At  last,  as  they  reached  Chesham,  Sylvia  said:  "  Seems 
to  me  you're  making  conversation." 

He  looked  at  her  with  wide  blue  eyes  in  which  swam 
all  the  miseries  of  his  childhood ;  with  loving  malignancy 
she  increased  his  confusion  by  gripping  his  wrist  suddenly 
in  her  gauntleted  hand. 

They  had  passed  the  day  together.  Contemptuous  of 
rules,  Sylvia  had  insisted  upon  snatching  him  up  for  a 
run  in  the  Government  car.  March  had  vaguely  thought 
of  a  matinee,  and,  who  knows?  of  a  kiss  in  the  cab  as  he 
drove  her  back  somewhere,  a  kiss  that  should  linger  on 
his  lips  during  his  leave,  which  he  must  devote  to  his 


234  BLIND  ALLEY 

people.  At  bottom  he  was  afraid  of  missing  the  evening 
express  to  the  North.  But  Sylvia  had  proved  irresistible. 

"  I'll  see  you  get  to  your  people,  baby,"  she  answered 
to  his  timid  objections.  "  If  we  miss  that  train  I'll  drive 
you  to  Northampton  to-night.  Unless,  of  course,  there's 
another  girl  you  want  to  see." 

"  Sylvia!    How  can  you!  " 

Sylvia  laughed.  He  had  said,  "  How  can  you !  "  like  a 
girl.  He  was  adorable,  she  thought,  so  tall,  so  sinewy, 
yet  so  unspoilt.  They  mustn't  spoil  him,  she  thought, 
with  a  tenderness  in  which  mingled  her  own  desire  to 
bruise  this  creature  too  gentle. 

They  were  alone  in  the  coffee-room  of  the  "Crown." 
Round  them  the  little  town  lay  entirely  silent,  as  if 
hardened  by  the  frost.  Sylvia  stood  against  the  fire- 
place, hands  in  pockets,  feet  apart,  like  a  man,  and 
looked  down  seriously  at  the  long  figure  in  the  armchair. 
They  spoke  very  little  at  tea,  ate  and  drank  quickly. 
They  tried  to  laugh  at  the  public-house  parlour,  the 
colossal  sideboard,  the  vast  cruet,  an  ash  tray  presented 
by  Cerebos,  at  the  pictures  of  race  horses  chosen  by 
Dewar,  but  an  oppression,  as  of  necessary  action,  hung 
over  both.  March  seemed  to  feel  it,  for  suddenly  bend- 
ing, he  seized  Sylvia's  hand.  "  Sylvia,"  he  murmured, 
"Sylvia  ..." 

"  Well?  "  she  said.    "  Is  that  all  you've  got  to  say?  " 

"I  often  say  it,"  he  replied,  "  over  and  over  again,  like 
a  song." 

"  And  what's  the  end  of  your  song?  "  asked  Sylvia. 

"  Oh,  don't  you  know?    Just  Sylvia." 

"Oh,  don't  you  think  one  might  say  with  Cyrano: 
1  That's  rather  short,  young  man?  '  One  might  have  said 
—  well,  many  things." 

He  stared  at  her,  not  quite  understanding:  then,  being 


AMONG  THE  YAHOOS  235 

very  young,  and  thinking  as  all  young  men  that  one  can 
with  a  caress  cut  the  Gordian  knot  of  a  woman's  per- 
plexity, he  stood  up  and  seizing  her  by  both  shoulders 
sought  her  lips.  He  was  amazed  to  find  himself  repulsed, 
and  while  she  smiled  up  at  him,  the  back  of  her  hand 
firm  against  his  chin,  he  tried  to  understand:  "  Didn't 
she  want  him  to  kiss  her?  Why  had  she  kissed  him  in 
May?  Of  course,  everybody  knew  women  were  queer." 
But  he  was  not  secure  enough,  had  learnt  too  little  from 
a  couple  of  shame-faced  experiences  of  the  easy  venality 
open  to  undergraduates  and  second  lieutenants,  either  to 
mollify  her  by  abasement,  or  to  dominate  her  by  brutal- 
ity. So  he  let  her  go  and  sat  down. 

He  did  not  realise  that  the  most  experienced  lovelace 
could  have  done  nothing  more  subtle  to  attract  this  strong, 
half-masculine  woman.  She  clasped  both  hands  between 
her  knees  in  an  effort  to  resist  her  desire.  She  did  not 
love  him.  She  had  never  loved  anybody,  but  she  had 
made  of  conquest  something  like  a  sport;  she  was  like 
a  man  who  likes  eating  grouse,  but  likes  shooting  them 
still  better.  For  a  moment  she  was  introspective.  She 
thought  of  her  husband.  She  wondered  where  Andy  was. 
Up  to  his  knees  in  water  in  some  trench,  very  likely. 
Seemed  rather  shabby  carrying  on  like  this  with  Andy 
out  there.  She  pushed  the  thought  away.  After  all,  it 
wasn't  her  fault  he  was  out  there,  and  if  he'd  been  in 
England,  no  doubt  she'd  be  doing  the  same  thing.  Well 
then?  It  didn't  do  Andy  any  more  harm,  if  it  did  him 
any  harm  at  all.  It  didn't  matter  where  he  was.  What 
sentiment  some  people  talked!  Then  she  thought  only 
of  March.  Yes,  he  invincibly  attracted  her,  and  the  nov- 
elty of  sudden  attraction  held  great  power  over  her;  for 
Sylvia,  though  much  courted  ever  since  she  was  fifteen, 
had  taken  very  little  notice  of  men  until  the  war.  The 


236  BLIND   ALLEY 

war  had  poured  into  her  some  intoxicating  philter.  She 
had  experienced  and  experienced  again,  hastily,  con- 
fusedly ;  married  Langrick  in  a  month,  known  other  com- 
panionships, had  mourned  her  first  husband,  found  an- 
other, and  more  companionships,  some  too  full,  some 
superficial;  made  of  her  life  a  surging  revue  of  men 
seeking  her  favour,  a  crisscross  of  meetings  and  engage- 
ments, promises,  caresses,  screaming  laughter  and  swiftly 
dried  tears,  as  if  the  war  had  pulled  out  some  safety  pin, 
and  her  emotions  had  begun  to  race  beyond  her  govern- 
ment. Suddenly,  she  stood  up. 

"  We  must  go,"  she  said  abruptly.  "  I'll  drive  you 
back." 

Without  a  word  March  sat  down  by  her  side.  The 
night  had  already  fallen,  and  as  the  car  swiftly  whirled 
homewards  he  shrank  from  the  solitude ;  there  was  no  life 
in  the  flat,  hard  fields;  and  in  the  black-blue  sky  hung 
low  already  a  white  strip  of  moon.  "  Was  this  all?  "  he 
wondered.  "  Yes,  of  course  it  was  all."  Yet,  the  sen- 
sitiveness of  him  that  was  like  a  raw  wound  told  him  this 
could  not  be.  As  the  white  road  curled  and  uncurled 
towards  the  horizon,  he  knew,  in  an  exquisiteness  of  fear, 
the  necessity  to  which  he  must  submit.  So  he  was  not 
surprised  when  at  the  edge  of  a  narrow  wood  Sylvia  pulled 
up  the  car  and  got  out. 

"We've  some  time  to  spare,"  she  said,  and  went 
into  the  wood.  After  a  moment  he  followed.  It  was  a 
wood  of  bare  birch  trees,  whose  thin  trunks  glistened  in 
the  moonlight.  As  he  followed  Sylvia  he  was  more  con- 
scious of  the  dead  leaves  that  crackled  under  his  feet 
than  of  anything.  In  the  middle  of  the  wood  she  stopped, 
turned;  she  was  adorable  to  him,  with  her  moonlit  white 
face,  in  which  her  eyes  shone  black  as  a  sorcerer's  magic 
mirror.  Then,  suddenly,  she  put  out  both  hands. 


AMONG  THE  YAHOOS  237 

"  Oliver,"  she  whispered  thickly. 

In  delicious  abandonment  he  took  her  in  his  arms,  and 
it  was  with  a  sense  of  surrender  rather  than  of  exultation 
that  he  felt  her  hands  close  about  him. 

Strange  thoughts  fled  through  his  brain  as  he  lay  in  her 
arms  on  the  carpet  of  leaves,  amazed  joy,  incredulity,  the 
face  of  the  comic  private,  his  old  people  in  the  north  —  if 
they  knew ;  the  scent  of  that  thick  brown  hair  so  near  his 
lips,  and  in  the  hard,  still  air,  the  loud  crackle  of  those 
dead  silver  leaves. 

XIII 

GOTTEN  HAM  stared  at  the  little  panoply  over  the 
mantelpiece  of  his  office,  a  grouping  of  rifle  and  machine- 
gun  ammunition,  of  little  anti-aircraft  rounds,  all  spring- 
ing from  a  tank  shell  stuck  into  its  brass  cartridge 
case.  The  day-shift  was  nearly  done;  he  could  hear  the 
girls  talk  louder.  Soon  there  was  a  hubbub  and  a  scraping 
of  feet  in  the  change-house.  Always  the  same  thing. 
How  much  longer  would  it  go  on?  Here  they  were  in 
March,  '17,  and  no  forrader. 

"  I  can't  stick  it  any  more,"  he  thought.  "  We're  get- 
ting on  for  three  years  of  this  war,  and  there's  no  end  to 
it.  Wonder  if  I'd  feel  better  if  I  joined  up?  Yes,  per- 
haps. But  I'm  forty.  No  use  blinking  at  it.  It's  no 
catch  being  a  second  lute  at  forty.  And  there  are  other 
things.  You  don't  mind  dying,  Frank,  old  boy,  but  you 
hate  getting  your  feet  wet.  Bully  beef  wouldn't  agree 
with  you.  And  you'd  hate  having  to  do  without  bath 
salts,  and  packing  your  underclothes  with  Keatings.  No, 
it  won't  do.  You  may  as  well  stay  here  and  do  a  bigger 
bit  in  the  factory  than  you'd  do  out  there  messing  about 
at  the  base." 


238  BLIND  ALLEY 

Then  he  brought  his  fist  down  upon  the  table:  "  I 
can't  bear  it.  Damn  her.  I  thought  I'd  got  rid  of  her." 
He  seized  a  sheet  of  paper,  began  to  write,  then  flung  his 
pen  down,  and  putting  the  unfinished  letter  in  his  pocket 
left  the  factory. 

XIV 

MONICA  sat  in  Sir  Hugh's  study.  Before  her  lay  a 
number  of  letters  on  which  her  father  had  pencilled  in- 
structions for  reply.  Her  chin  upon  her  hand,  she 
looked  at  the  letter  before  her.  She  had  just  read  it  for 
the  second  time.  Certain  phrases,  paragraphs,  filled  her 
mind: 

"  .  .  .  One  thinks  one  can  get  away,  escape  from  life. 
One  can,  perhaps;  one  can  shut  oneself  up  in  a  monastery; 
one  can  go  and  shoot  big  game  in  East  Africa.,  like  the 
romantic  heroes  of  —  shall  we  say  Miss  Braddon?  One 
can  take  on  so  much  work  that  there's  no  time  left  except 
to  sleep.  Yes,  one  can  escape  from  life,  but  one  can't 
escape  from  oneself." 

"  Yes,  he  was  right."  Monica  knew  that  she  had  not 
escaped:  she'd  only  got  out  on  ticket  of  leave. 

"  I've  thought  of  you,  and  thought  of  you,  and  blessed 
you  for  going  away,  because  I've  thought  it  was  better  for 
you,  and  better  for  me,  and,  think  what  you  will,  I've 
done  nothing,  and  said  nothing,  and  wanted  nothing  that 
wasn't  for  your  happiness.  Other  people  might  not  say 
so,  moral  people,  but  moral  people  don't  understand 
morality  any  better  than  Christians  understand  religion. 
And  I've  cursed  you  for  leaving  me.  And  I've  wept  for 
you,  and  screamed  for  you.  I've  written  to  you  and  I've 
torn  up  the  letters.  I've  come  in  the  car  at  night  to  your 
own  lodge  gate.  And  to  forget  you  I've  done  more  than  I 


AMONG  THE  YAHOOS  239 

dare  tell  you.  And  I  can't  forget  you.  Ah!  if  it  had 
only  been,  perhaps  I  might  forget  you,  but  a  man  can't 
forget  the  future. 

"  I  write  you  this  letter  from  Bull's  Field  in  the  fore- 
man's shanty.  Do  you  remember?  This  is  March,  and 
from  the  moist  earth  thousands  of  little  green  spears  are 
shooting.  There  are  five  primroses  and  nine  bluebells  on 
the  bank  nearest  the  Medway.  And  the  little  oaks  have 
grown.  Do  you  remember?  " 

Monica  clasped  both  hands  on  her  breast.  This  re- 
current "  do  you  remember  "  raised  in  her  an  intolerable 
emotion.  But  she  must  go  on.  For  a  moment  she  exam- 
ined her  present  life:  secretary  to  her  father.  How  she 
loved  him !  Never  had  Sir  Hugh  shown  such  sweetness 
as  in  these,  the  days  of  his  melancholy.  She  was  doing 
something;  she  was  a  secretary,  and  busy  enough.  Her 
mother,  too,  put  forward  claims,  and  Monica  found  many 
hours  a  day  filled  by  Lady  Oakley's  economy  campaign. 
But  —  she  had  that  day  walked  to  Udimore  copse  where 
also  the  primroses  and  bluebells  were  shooting,  where  the 
humid  scent  of  spring  rose  from  the  crowding  moss,  from 
the  trees  quickening  into  life.  The  ewes  were  leading 
across  the  fields  lambs  so  young  that  they  tottered ;  there 
were  faint  bleatings  in  the  air,  and  the  birds  already  were 
filling  it  with  lovers'  calls.  She  bent  down  to  the  letter 
eyes  that  were  misty: 

"...  Come  back.  You  must  come  back,  not  because 
I  need  you,  not  because  you  need  me  but  because  we  have 
already  come  together,  long  ago,  and  have  given  birth  to 
a  being  made  of  cloud,  crowned  with  the  myrtle  of  my  de- 
sire, with  the  roses  of  your  lips.  Now  that  being  is  dis- 
embodied, half  with  you,  half  with  me.  Come  back, 
Monica,  and  at  one  look  of  your  eyes  that  are  grey  and 
alive  like  running  water,  it  shall  live  again,  and  it  shall 


240  BLIND  ALLEY 

dance  for  us,  so  light  that  under  it  not  a  blade  of  grass 
will  bend,  in  its  garment  of  golden  cloud,  under  its  crown 
of  myrtle  and  roses  .  .  . ." 

XV 

MAUDWESTCOTT  had  not  long  maintained  her  senti- 
mental widowhood.  After  a  few  weeks  of  drama,  during 
which  Lady  Oakley  was  exasperated  by  enlarged  blue 
eyes  which  gazed  at  her  mournfully,  while  the  maid  did 
her  hair,  Westcott  had  completely  forgotten  Sutton.  She 
had  wept  the  dead  footman,  written  to  his  commanding 
officer  for  a  lock  of  his  hair,  received  in  reply  a  pipe  in  an 
advanced  stage  of  decrepitude;  then  she  lost  the  pipe  and 
all  memory  of  Sutton.  Soon  Mrs.  Marsden  was  holding 
conferences  with  Lee  in  the  housekeeper's  room  as  to  the 
behaviour  of  that  hussy:  "  The  poor  young  fellow  hardly 
cold  in  his  grave,  and  she  gets  off  with  Mr.  Temple,  a 
married  man  too." 

This  was  exaggerating.  Westcott  had  not  gone  off  with 
Temple,  not  so  much  because  the  chauffeur  adored  his 
young  wife  as  because  intrigue  at  Knapenden  Place  car- 
ried so  much  publicity  that  it  was  almost  impossible.  So 
nothing  precise  could  be  fixed  on  the  couple,  except  that 
Westcott  had  developed  an  incomprehensible  interest  in 
motors.  She  talked  about  learning  to  drive  a  car,  and 
joining  the  A.  S.  C.,  but  the  other  servants  hardly  thought 
it  necessary  that  she  should  seek  theoretical  information 
by  shutting  herself  up  in  the  garage  with  Temple,  and 
always  wanting  to  put  her  head  down  to  the  bonnet  at  the 
same  time  as  did  he. 

There  was  Keele,  too,  who  in  December  had  earned  for 
Knapenden  its  first  military  medal.  Now  his  old  father, 
still  resentful  and  ashamed,  had  to  own  with  a  sort  of  rage 


AMONG  THE  YAHOOS  241 

that  the  boy  was  justifying  himself,  for  he  had  obtained 
the  Distinguished  Service  Cross,  and  been  made  a  ser- 
geant. The  young  soldier  did  not  forget  the  flaxen-haired 
jade.  Almost  every  week,  in  answer  to  her  occasional 
misspelt,  blotchy  communications,  there  came  to  her  a 
letter  from  the  front,  carefully  written,  as  if  in  an  office,  a 
quiet,  cheerful  letter  from  which  the  young  man  excluded 
horrors;  he  courted  her  without  rhetoric,  as  if  determined 
to  win  her  by  quiet  persistence  and  a  humble  conscious- 
ness of  worth.  Westcott  would  have  liked  something 
more  stormy.  The  diagrams  of  the  internal  parts  of 
machine-guns,  which  Keele  sent  her,  being  thoroughly 
male  and  entirely  blind  to  feminine  interests,  did  not 
worry  her  much;  she  threw  them  away,  as  women  will 
always  treat  those  sides  of  men  which  seem  to  them 
puerile.  But  she  missed  fervour  in  his  wooing;  what  she 
really  wanted  was  a  letter  with  "  I  love  you  "  once  in 
every  line,  this  interspersed  with  music-hall  catches.  Thus 
love  would  have  been  comic  and  passionate,  and  would 
have  satisfied  the  deeper  need  of  her  kind.  This  Dobbin- 
like  affection,  while  certainly  an  assurance  against  the 
future,  wearied  her,  drove  her  towards  Temple.  The  fact 
that  the  chauffeur  was  married  added  to  the  excitement 
of  the  affair,  which  was  already  dangerous  because  he  was 
a  chauffeur:  the  chauffeur  was  still  a  buccaneer  of  love  in 
a  countryside  that  knew  little  of  the  airman. 

Still  Westcott  suffered  from  the  war.  Too  many  men 
had  been  called  up,  and  Westcott  could  not  have  been 
happy  in  Eden,  though  there  she  might  have  been  faith- 
ful. Also  there  was  no  fun,  no  cricket  to  raise  excitement; 
Hastings  afforded  little  variety  on  Sunday  afternoon. 
She  felt  that  this  war  had  lasted  long  enough;  she  re- 
sented having  nothing  to  do  on  her  afternoons  off  except 
to  walk  alone  along  soggy  roads.  But  she  could  not 


242  BLIND  ALLEY 

stay  .in  the  house.  Always  she  wandered  out  past  the 
"  King's  Arms",  stared  for  a  moment  at  the  wire  blinds, 
at  the  body  of  the  big  bumble-bee,  which  last  summer 
had  fallen  between  the  blind  and  the  glass  and  there  died. 
She  would  look  around,  at  the  ironmonger's  shop  outside 
which  a  dog  slept,  exchange  a  nod  with  Mr.  Balcombe,  or 
go  in  and  buy  a  stamp  for  the  sake  of  something  to  do, 
listen  to  the  regular  hammering  of  Farcet  cobbling  a  boot, 
and  then  with  a  sigh  wander  along  the  lane  towards  the 
marsh. 

On  one  of  those  days,  just  after  she  had  passed  Police- 
man's House,  intending  to  go  to  Rye  and  eat  chocolates, 
she  saw  in  the  distance,  leaning  against  a  stile,  a  soldier. 
In  the  faint  haze  that  rose  from  the  marsh  on  that  grey 
spring  afternoon,  she  could  see  that  he  was  a  rather  small 
man.  He  rested  both  elbows  on  the  stile,  and  stared  in- 
tensely at  the  old  toll-gate  further  on.  His  immobility 
bewildered  her,  for  he  was  not  smoking,  and  Westcott 
could  not  believe  that  a  man  was  doing  nothing,  just 
thinking.  So,  as  she  passed,  she  slewed  her  eyes  to  the 
left.  Hearing  her  footsteps  he  turned  and  looked  at  her. 

The  face  shook  and  thrilled  her.  It  was  very  young, 
meagre,  almost  wizened;  bitterness  hung  about  the  thin 
lips.  It  was  a  desperate  and  unhappy  face,  so  she  walked 
away  quicker,  for  despair  was  as  unpleasant  to  Westcott 
as  might  have  been  an  abscess.  The  soldier  stared  for  a 
moment  at  the  hurrying  figure,  then  called  out  "  Hello." 
She  did  not  slacken,  but  her  heart  beat;  this  was  not  the 
first  time  a  man  spoke  to  her  upon  the  road,  and  she  did 
not  snub  them  as  a  rule,  but  she  felt  inclined  to  run  as 
she  heard  him  behind  her.  Still,  when  he  reached  her 
side,  she  was  so  grateful  to  him  for  having  caused  some- 
thing to  happen  that  she  responded  gladly. 

"  Where  are  you  going  to?  "  said  the  soldier. 


AMONG  THE  YAHOOS  243 

"  Oh !    Just  about  as  far  as  turn  back." 
"  Ah !    Suppose  I  go  along  with  you  for  a  bit?  " 
"  Please  yourself.    Shan't  miss  you  if  you  don't." 
The  soldier  accepted  this  as  an  invitation,  and,  slipping 
his  hand  through  her  arm,  seized  her  wrist. 

"  I  say !  "  murmured  Westcott,  making  a  movement  as 
if  to  free  herself,  yet  managing  not  to  do  so.  "  You're 
getting  on,  ain't  you?  "  But  as  for  the  first  time  she  took 
in  the  details  of  him,  she  noticed  the  white  band  on  his 
cap.  A  cadet!  Almost  an  officer!  This  thrilled  her, 
so  she  made  no  resistance  as  the  man  purposefully  gath- 
ered her  fingers  into  his  hand. 

"  What  were  you  doing  all  on  your  lonesome?  "  she 
asked.  Then,  more  archly:  "  What  11  your  wife  say  if 
she  catches  us?  " 

"  I've  got  no  wife.    I  don't  want  one." 
"  Nice  thing  to  tell  a  lady  the  first  two  minutes." 
"  What's  the  good  of  my  having  a  wife?    She'd  only  be 
a  widow  before  the  year's  out." 

Westcott  made  as  if  to  draw  away.  She  hated  those 
serious  remarks.  So  she  tried  to  be  light:  "  Cheer  up," 
she  said.  "  Every  cloud  has  a  silver  lining." 

The  man  did  not  reply.  Putting  his  arm  about  her 
shoulders  as  they  walked,  he  bent  and  kissed  her  upon 
the  neck. 

"  Let  me  go,"  she  whispered. 

"  Oh!  no,"  said  the  soldier,  "  I  shan't  let  you  go.  These 
days  one  must  take  what  one  can."  He  spoke  about  him- 
self: He  had  been  a  jockey,  joined  up  in  '14,  wounded, 
now  a  cadet  in  the  Flying  Corps. 

"  In  the  Flying  Corps!  "  repeated  Westcott,  staring  at 
him  with  entranced  eyes.  "  Not  reely !  " 

The  man  laughed.  "  Yes,  in  the  Flying  Corps.  We 
don't  last  long  at  that  game.  I've  got  my  certificate;  I 


244  BLIND  ALLEY 

expect  I'll  get  a  commission  in  a  week  or  two.  And  it's 
back  to  dear  old  Flanders  —  for  good." 

They  were  together  all  that  afternoon,  and  when  it  was 
done  Westcott  wondered  whether  she  hated  him.  His 
caresses,  which  before  darkness  grew  more  purposeful  and 
savage  than  any  she  had  known,  shook  her  and  pleased 
her,  but  the  man  was  so  very  sure  that  he  would  die.  It 
made  it  ghastly,  like  kissing  in  a  graveyard.  Still  she 
did  not  refuse  to  meet  him  again,  and  when  she  came  once 
more,  a  week  later,  it  was  with  a  little  thrill  of  horrible 
attraction  that  she  heard  the  commission  was  granted. 
He  would  sail  next  day. 

"  Shan't  see  you  again?  "  she  murmured,  "  in  your  Sam 
Browne?  "  They  sat  upon  a  log  in  the  copse  half  way  to 
Rye. 

"  No,"  said  the  soldier.  "  You  won't  see  me  again  ever. 
At  least  I  don't  suppose." 

Westcott  did  not  reply  for  a  moment.  Then  suddenly 
burst  into  tears.  Gently  the  man  stroked  her  neck,  as  if 
he  did  not  know  what  to  say.  "  Don't  take  on,"  he  mur- 
mured. "  I  shan't  be  missed.  I've  buried  better  men 
than  me,  lots  of  them,  Englishmen  and  Huns  all  mixed." 

"  Don't,"  she  murmured  weakly. 

"  But  what's  the  odds?  "  he  said,  with  forced  lightness. 
"I'm  not  dead  yet."  He  drew  her  closer.  " After  all, 
I've  met  you  before  my  time's  up.  Might  have  been 
worse."  He  kissed  her  so  that  she  shrank.  Then  she 
grew  rigid  in  his  grasp  as  he  whispered  in  her  ear. 

"  No,"  she  murmured.    "  No,  please  don't." 

His  voice  came  to  her  as  through  a  curtain. 

"  I  shan't  last.  Life  won't  give  me  much  more.  You 
can't  say  '  no  ;  to  that." 

"Please,  please  ..." 

But  she  shuddered  in  his  arms,  and  was  too  weak  to 


AMONG  THE  YAHOOS  245 

resist.  A  preposterous  cry  rose  up  in  her:  the  scent  of 
impending  death,  the  need  for  universal  sacrifice,  the 
need  to  bear  witness  in  the  only  way  possible  to  her 
futility  seemed  to  gather  her  up  and  make  her  powerless 
for  anything  but  the  need  to  express  the  first  nobility 
which  had  ever  grown  in  her  sluttishness.  So  she  flung 
her  arms  about  his  neck  as  if  expressing  in  her  clasp: 
"Hail,  Love!  those  who  are  about  to  die  salute  thee." 

XVI 

MONICA  had  returned  to  Rochester  the  prey  of  so  many 
anticipations,  emotions,  plans,  that  they  neutralised  each 
other  in  her  mind,  reduced  her  to  a  blankness  which 
amounted  to  an  abdication  of  will.  She  had  gone  back 
less  because  she  wanted  to  than  because  she  found  herself 
unable  to  want  anything  else.  And  it  had  been  easy,  as 
if  the  old  bottle  had  been  waiting  for  the  new  wine.  When 
she  asked  to  be  taken  on  again  at  the  staff  office,  nobody 
seemed  to  remember  her  or  care  about  her.  The  same 
day  she  found  herself  in  the  pressing  sheds,  at  work  which 
did  not  greatly  differ  from  the  old.  She  nearly  regained 
her  rooms ;  her  old  drawing-room  floor  was  occupied  now 
by  new  people ;  at  the  top  still  lived  the  head  clerk  of  the 
Stroud  factory,  with  his  little  girl  and  a  new  baby,  but 
the  elderly  spinsters  having  just  gone,  Monica  took  the 
ground  floor :  as  this  had  been  furnished  by  the  same  hand 
as  her  old  rooms  it  had  a  brotherhood  with  them.  She 
slipped  back  into  the  old  life.  And  it  went  on,  naturally, 
as  if  indeed  this  were  an  act  of  fate.  She  telephoned 
Cottenham  from  a  call  office,  and  on  the  second  night  met 
him  in  Bull's  Field. 

That  indeed  was  an  exquisite  moment,  for  she  was  first 
at  the  tryst.  He  was  right ;  it  was  lovely.  The  primroses 


246  BLIND  ALLEY 

and  bluebells  were  dead,  but  wild  anemones  were 
blooming  on  the  bank,  and  the  little  oaks  were  green.  As 
the  door  closed  behind  him,  and  he  ran  across  the  turf,  she 
clasped  both  hands  across  her  breast  and  closed  her 
eyes;  it  gave  her  an  emotion  too  poignant  to  see  him  run, 
alert,  his  blue  eyes  so  bright.  Yet  that  first  evening  left 
her  half  satisfied.  She  had  made  a  vague  plan;  they 
would  talk;  they  would  recognise  their  need  for  each 
other;  they  would  arrive  at  decisions,  and  then  harmo- 
niously live  the  lives  laid  down  for  them  by  destiny.  It 
did  not  happen  like  that:  with  indrawn  breaths  they  fell 
into  each  other's  arms,  and  there  stayed,  caressing  each 
other,  capable  only  of  greedy  caresses  and  swooning  sur- 
renders, speaking  not  at  all,  able  only  to  communicate 
by  the  soft  murmurs  of  lovers.  It  had  gone  so  fast,  and 
as  ever  he  had  been  aware  of  flying  time,  had  loosed  the 
long  hands  from  his  neck  and  with  a  cry,  half  of  pain, 
half  of  rage,  had  left  her  lying,  eyes  buried  on  her  arms. 

She  brought  it  up  that  night  as  she  sewed.  Her  mind 
was  clear  now,  for  they  had  met  again;  the  first  urgency 
being  past,  they  had  talked.  She  understood  herself  bet- 
ter now.  She  stood  resigned  before  a  growing  inevitable. 
The  centre  of  her  thoughts  was  occupied  by  his  phrase: 
"  After  the  war."  Yes,  she  did  not  know  what  must  be, 
but  it  must  be  after  the  war,  when  the  times  would  be 
new  and  liberties  regained.  Monica  was  no  longer  sub- 
jecting herself  to  moral  analysis.  All  she  could  think 
was:  "  I'm  in  for  it,"  and  she  was  inclined  to  let  herself 
peacefully  drown.  She  was  not  happy:  she  was  only 
sentenced  to  pleasure.  But  a  sentence  beyond  appeal. 

He,  too,  shared  her  sense  of  doom.  Somehow  they  had 
come  to  a  clear  conclusion,  and  he  had  to  talk  of  it.  Now 
they  met  every  evening  in  Bull's  Field,  which  was 
shrouded  by  mists  soft  as  the  ghosts  of  pearls. 


AMONG  THE  YAHOOS  247 

"  I  don't  know  how  we'll  do  it,"  he  said,  "  but  we  must. 
Just  now  we're  so  tied.  Three-quarters  of  an  hour  here 
and  there."  She  pressed  closer  to  him.  "  I  wish  I  could 
do  without  you." 

"  Frank,"  she  asked,  "  are  you  sorry  I  came  back?  " 

He  grasped  her  in  a  sort  of  despair,  and  with  the  bold- 
ness which  made  him  adorable  to  women  said:  "  Yes,  I'm 
sorry  you  came  back.  I  wish  you  were  dead.  But  I'm 
glad  to  my  very  marrow  you've  come  back.  I  want  you 
as  I've  never  wanted  a  woman.  It's  a  sort  of  fever,  and 
it's  got  to  burn  itself  through,  or  I'll  never  get  it  out  of 
my  system."  He  laughed.  "  A  nice  way  to  court  a  girl, 
isn't  it?  The  truth  has  its  appeal  to  women:  they  hear 
so  little  of  it.  And  you're  just  the  same.  You  don't 
know  it  as  I  do;  you're  innocent,  and  I've  twenty-five 
years  of  debauchery  behind  me,  I'm  glad  to  say,  and  I 
wish  I  had  more.  But  you're  just  the  same.  You  can't 
do  without  me.  Is  that  true?  " 

She  looked  up  at  him  with  humble  eyes.  "  I  suppose 
so,"  she  said. 

He  understood  women's  surrenders  too  well  to  ask  for 
more  clarity.  If  she  surrendered  her  will,  was  she  not 
giving  more  than  her  body?  She  was  giving  him  a  call 
on  her  life.  "  After  the  war,"  he  repeated.  "  Oh !  I  know 
it  sounds  all  wrong.  We  can't  marry.  We  know  it. 
And  we  can't  let  each  other  go.  Well,  we  must  resign 
ourselves  to  it.  When  we're  free,  when  we've  time,  when 
we're  not  hunted  and  persecuted  by  publicity,  supervision, 
compulsion  to  be  at  certain  places  at  certain  times  ..." 

"  I  wonder  if  we'll  be  happy,"  said  Monica. 

"  No.  Nobody's  happy.  One  has  moments,  that's  all. 
And  we  shall  have  more  than  most." 

She  bowed  her  head ;  her  vision  of  the  future  was  vague, 
since  she  must  accept  the  clandestine.  She  couldn't  help 


248  BLIND  ALLEY 

it.  Then  there  would  be  none  of  these  jars;  she  would 
have  him  to  herself  at  any  time ;  he  would  lie  upon  a  sofa, 
smoke  a  pipe,  read  a  newspaper,  take  no  notice  of  her 
until  he  was  royally  minded  to  call  her  to  his  side.  And 
then  she  would  sit  down  upon  the  floor,  and  humbly  taking 
his  hand  place  it  upon  her  cheek,  asking  no  more  until 
he  saw  fit  to  confer  it. 

S®  they  met  almost  every  day.  They  were  living  in  the 
future  rather  than  in  the  past,  and  though  sometimes  the 
madness  of  spring  filled  them,  inflamed  them  with  an 
ardour  which  frightened  him  and  left  her  weak,  the  prom- 
ise of  that  harmonious  future  preserved  them  from  final- 
ities. It  was  agony  to  him.  Cottenham  thought:  "  It 
can't  go  on.  It  will  be  too  much  for  me,  and  then  we  shall 
both  be  in  a  trap,  irretrievably  committed  to  each  other, 
inaccessible  to  each  other.  After  the  war,  oh,  mercy, 
after  the  war." 

But  Monica  was  happier  than  he,  for  she  had  surren- 
dered her  will,  thus  her  responsibility.  He  was  right. 
They  must  refuse  each  other  the  gladness  of  full  giving 
until  they  were  free,  and  meanwhile  maintain  their  link. 
But  she  knew  also  that  she  agreed  with  him,  and  that  if 
reflection  or  accident  changed  his  mind  or  forced  his 
action,  she  would  still  agree  with  him.  She  had  abdi- 
cated. Now  and  then  she  escaped  this  thrall.  Once  or 
twice  she  thought  of  flight.  But  in  the  end  she  always 
told  herself:  "  What's  the  good?  He's  right.  One  can't 
escape  from  oneself."  Yet  her  innocence  strove  to  sur- 
vive the  wreck  of  her  will.  She  was  writing  more  often 
to  Hurn,  as  if  begging  him  to  defend  her.  But  Hurn  did 
not  understand  her  vague  appeals  or  unconsciously  subtle 
phrases.  He  still  wrote  her  passionate,  egoistic  letters 
in  which  his  religious  temperament  found  expression  in 
the  form  of  virulent  titanism: 


AMONG  THE  YAHOOS  249 

"  This  war  makes  one  hate  God.  I  don't  know  whether 
He  is  the  God  of  battles  and  enjoys  the  whole  thing  as  He 
enjoyed  the  smoking  holocaust  of  oxen  four  thousand 
years  ago  —  there  are  smoking  holocausts  enough  to 
please  him  in  no  man's  land  —  but  anyway  He's  let  it 
happen.  Omnipotent!  and  He's  let  it  happen.  Omnis- 
cient! He  knew  it  in  advance  and  He's  let  it  happen.  I 
hate  Him  ..." 

Hum  frightened  Monica.  Could  she  love  anti-Christ? 
And  was  he  anti-Christ?  She  vaguely  felt  that  the  man 
who  hates  God  confesses  him.  Besides  Hum  could  not 
reach  her  emotions  because  he  had  come  half-near  to 
them.  If  he  had  been  a  stranger  he  could  have  influenced 
her;  if  he  had  been  her  lover  he  could  have  influenced 
her ;  but  he  chose  to  stand  between  the  two  and  was  pow- 
erless. 

So,  day  by  day,  as  spring  raced  into  summer,  she  let 
herself  peacefully  sink.  What  else  could  she  do?  Some- 
times she  asked  herself  whether  she  loved  Cottenham.  In 
a  way  she  knew  that  she  did  not,  and  she  was  sure  that  he 
did  not  love  her.  He  had  never  even  said  so.  In  the 
rarest  moments  of  exaltation  he  had  said:  "I  adore  you," 
or  "  I  want  you,"  but  he  had  never  said  simply:  "  I  love 
you."  She  knew  instinctively  that  he  shrank  from  such 
a  lie.  Did  she  need  him  to  love  her?  Yes,  at  first  she 
had  needed  it;  often  he  had  hardened  and  shrunk  away 
from  her  when  she  murmured:  "  Do  you  like  me?  "  forc- 
ing him  to  reply  or  to  evade,  knowing  very  well  what  she 
wanted  him  to  reply.  No,  they  did  not  love  each  other, 
but  in  a  way  it  was  worse;  they  did  not  love  each  other 
and  yet  they  did  not  know  how  to  part.  So  she  allowed 
the  thrall  to  grow  heavier  upon  her,  a  thrall  less  of  the 
senses  than  of  the  mind,  to  a  woman  the  most  fatal.  It 
was  in  his  intellectual  moods  he  held  her  most  power- 


250  BLIND   ALLEY 

fully,  when  he  did  not  look  at  her,  and  talked  half  to 
himself. 

"  Do  you  know,"  he  said  abruptly,  one  day,  "  it  strikes 
me  I'm  a  parasite.  I'm  just  getting  richer  and  richer." 

"  Isn't  that  what  every  business  man  does?  "  asked 
Monica. 

"  Yes,  that's  the  devil  of  it.  Richer  and  richer.  And 
what  next?  What  am  I  to  do  with  my  money?  Leave 
it  to  Rupert  who'll  blow  it.  I  don't  mind  his  blowing 
it,  but  what  an  end !  Seems  to  me  one  ought  to  do  more 
with  money.  But  nobody  does.  Look  at  our  million- 
aires, building  model  villages  for  a  thousand  people, 
while  their  factories  wreck  the  bodies  of  a  hundred  thou- 
sand; creating  libraries,  and  endowing  universities  where 
they  teach  young  men  chemistry,  woodwork,  the  history 
of  kings  and  battles,  and  all  that  sort  of  tosh,  and  how  to 
run  a  machine  so  that  a  million  toothpicks  may  bloom 
where  only  one  bloomed  before.  A  pretty  orgy  of  mil- 
lionairism!  The  millionaire  is  the  most  venomous  of 
human  benefactors.  By  degrees  he  is  driving  all  the 
clever  young  workingmen  into  education  shops  —  driv- 
ing them  into  a  pen  where  they  shall  browse  the  rank 
grasses  of  practical  knowledge  and  drink  from  the  pois- 
oned wells  of  capitalist  teaching.  The  working  classes 
will  have  to  blow  it  all  up,  educate  themselves,  instead  of 
letting  us  spoil  them.  Our  class,  we're  just  warpers,  cu- 
riosity blunters,  murderers  of  wonder  and  of  change." 

She  listened  to  him,  shaken  and  delighted.  "  How 
you've  conquered  me!"  she  thought.  "Whatever  you 
think,  I  seem  to  think.  Do  I  think?  " 


AMONG  THE  YAHOOS  251 

XVII 

AT  the  end  of  April,  following  on  a  telegram,  Monica 
went  up  to  the  New  Hospital  at  Rye.  Family  influence 
had  been  hurriedly  marshalled  to  get  Stephen  evacuated 
from  the  base  hospital.  Now  she  sat  by  his  bedside,  half 
stunned  by  the  suddenness  of  it  all.  When  she  heard 
that  he  was  severely  wounded  it  had  seemed  unreal;  it 
was  incredible  that  her  brother  should  be  lying  there, 
looking  so  ordinary,  and  yet  silent,  with  an  air  of  ab- 
sence. He  was  badly  hit  in  one  leg,  and  seemed  to  be 
suffering  from  shell-shock.  He  was  conscious,  addressed 
everybody  by  their  name,  but  had  nothing  to  say ;  he  lay 
absorbed  in  private  thoughts.  To  enquiries  he  answered 
only  "  Yes  "  or  "  No."  The  hour  which  Monica  spent  by 
him  with  Lady  Oakley,  who  was  so  determined  to  smile 
and  look  cheerful  that  she  made  grimaces,  was  entirely 
ghastly.  As  Stephen  hardly  answered  them,  by  degrees 
they  ceased  to  have  anything  to  say,  and  sat  on,  smiling, 
executing  a  duty,  feeling  hatred  mingle  with  their  sorrow. 
Monica  was  full  of  shame  as  she  realised  that  she  was  glad 
when  the  matron  turned  them  out.  She  was  glad,  as  one 
is  when  at  last  the  beloved  is  dead  after  long  disease, 
when  the  body  is  cleared  away  and  one  is  free.  And  she 
had  to  be  optimistic,  to  cheer  her  mother  who  unre- 
strainedly wept  in  the  High  Street. 

"  He'll  be  all  right,  mother.  Everybody  says  so ;  the 
doctor  says  so,  so  does  Sister.  And  Louise  is  going  to 
look  after  him  herself."  But  Lady  Oakley  could  hardly 
be  consoled.  She  knew  that  he  was  not  going  to  die,  but 
it  injured  her  maternal  pride  that  her  only  son  should 
take  so  little  notice  of  her.  Badly  wounded,  yes,  but  she 
was  his  mother.  She  was  so  unhappy  that  Monica  felt 
remorseful  and  ashamed.  When,  late  in  the  afternoon, 


BLIND  ALLEY 

she  took  the  train  back  to  Ashford,  she  told  herself  that 
she  ought  not  to  go.  She  had  left  them  so  unhappy,  Lady 
Oakley  crying  quietly,  and  Sir  Hugh  pretending  to  read 
"Contes  Gruels",  putting  down  his  book,  nervously  pacing 
his  study,  or  playing  with  the  fluffy  red  gold  of  Kalli- 
krates's  ears.  "Ah!  Kallikrates  didn't  care.  He  went 
on  purring,  and  drinking  milk,  and  begging  for  toast. 
And  when  he  wanted  you  he  put  an  enormous  paw,  lined 
with  orange  velvet,  upon  your  knee.  And  when  he  didn't 
want  you  he  just  walked  away,  leaving  behind  him  a  trail 
of  contempt.  Oh!  fortunate  cat,  aloof  from  all  passions 
and  all  responsibilities,  centre  of  his  visible  world,  on 
whom  no  emotions  are  enjoined  and  that  dwells  on  an 
Olympus  below  the  crest  of  which  loves  and  duties  hang 
pale  as  clouds.  Like  a  god,  looking  down  without  emo- 
tion or  curiosity  on  little  servant  men." 

But  she  knew  she  could  not  stay.  She  had  not  the  will 
to  stay  unless  Cottenham  told  her  to.  As  the  train  puffed 
out  of  Rye  this  suddenly  struck  her  as  terrible,  and  for  a 
moment  she  revolted.  As  the  train  ground  its  brakes  and 
stopped,  she  leapt  on  the  platform.  She  wouldn't  go. 
No,  it  was  too  much !  Go  back  to  a  man  who  didn't  love 
her,  and  whom  she  didn't  love,  when  her  brother  lay 
there,  dying  perhaps,  and  her  people  beginning  to  mourn 
him.  But  a  few  moments  later,  as  she  reached  the  Gun 
Garden,  her  courage  ran  out.  What  was  she  to  do  now? 
Cottenham  would  want  her.  "Oh !  "  she  thought,  "  if  only 
I  could  believe  it  was  a  sin  it  would  help  me."  She  prayed 
for  faith,  but  she  could  think  only  of  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land. Suddenly  she  remembered  that  a  few  yards  away 
lived  Monsignor  Lublin.  She  had  not  seen  him  for  a  long 
time,  as  he  seldom  left  the  monastery.  Somebody  must 
help  Her;  perhaps  he  could. 

The  old  priest  almost  at  once  ceased  to  enquire  as  to 


AMONG  THE  YAHOOS  253 

the  health  of  her  family  and  her  doings.  The  fine  in- 
stinct which  had  made  him  master  of  so  many  souls  told 
him  she  had  a  purpose.  So  he  waited,  his  thin,  beautiful 
hands  joined;  a  faint  smile  lay  upon  his  lips,  while  the 
deep  eyes  under  the  black  brows  held  no  inquiry.  Mon- 
ica found  her  thoughts  stray:  "How  beautiful  he  was! 
That  exquisite,  disdainful  nose!  "  Then  she  forced  her- 
self. 

"  Father,  I  want  you  to  receive  my  confession." 

"  It  is  impossible,  my  child,  until  you  are  received  into 
the  Catholic  Church." 

"  I  can't  do  that,  I  don't  believe.  At  least,  I  mean,  I 
suppose  I  believe  in  the  way  I've  been  taught.  That's 
not  the  real  way,  is  it,  the  Vicar's  way?  " 

"  It  is  not  for  me,"  said  Monsignor  Lublin,  "  to  criti- 
cise your  faith.  Your  fate  rests  entirely  in  your  own 
hands." 

"  Don't,"  cried  Monica,  holding  out  her  hands,  "  don't 
push  me  away  like  that." 

"  I'm  not  pushing  you  away,  my  child,"  said  the  old 
man  gently.  "  If  you  want  to  come  to  us  you  will  find 
our  arms  open  if  you  have  faith." 

"  What  is  faith?  " 

The'  priest  hesitated.  "  Faith,"  he  said,  "  well,  it's  a 
thirst.  Some  of  us  find  the  Brook." 

"  I  don't  understand,"  said  Monica. 

"  You  don't  need  to  understand.  You  cannot  under- 
stand. All  you  have  to  do  is  to  believe." 

"  Believe?    You  mean  in  sin  and  hell?  " 

He  smiled.  "  What  barbarians  you  people  are !  Such 
little  things!" 

"  Little  things!     Hell's  not  a  little  thing." 

"  No,  of  course  not.  But  don't  be  afraid.  Hell  is  not 
a  lake  of  flaming  pitch.  It  is  the  ultimate  metaphor 


254  BLIND  ALLEY 

of  human  misery.  And  as  for  sin,  dear  child,  don't 
think  of  sin;  think  of  God  and  then  there  will  be  no 
sin." 

"  I  am  sinning,"  said  the  girl  obstinately.  "  It's  killing 
me.  I  beg  you,  let  me  confess  to  you." 

"  It  cannot  be,"  said  the  old  priest.  "  But  if  you  like  to 
talk  to  me  as  to  an  old  man  whose  watch  you  smashed 
when  you  were  a  tiny  baby,  do  so." 

After  a  long  pause  Monica  tried  to  speak,  but  tears 
choked  her.  Monsignor  Lublin  made  no  effort  to  still 
her,  but  gently  stroked  her  hand.  At  last  she  smiled  at 
him,  and  with  sudden  resolution  told  him  the  little  which 
had  happened,  and  all  that  the  future  held.  He  listened, 
showing  neither  disapproval  nor  sympathy.  Then  he 
said:  "  My  child,  why  do  you  come  to  me  with  a  ques- 
tion in  your  mouth  when  you  know  the  answer?  " 

"  I  don't  know  the  answer,  father." 

"  You  do.  You  know  that  you  must  not  see  him 
again." 

"  I  must." 

"  You  spoke  of  sin.    This  is  sin." 

"  I  know.  I  can't  help  it.  Oh !  father,  forbid  me  to 
sin." 

"  I  cannot  forbid  you  to  sin,  Monica.  I  am  not  your 
director.  I'm  only  your  friend.  If  you  were  received 
into  the  Church  it  would  be  different." 

"  Then  receive  me." 

"  But  you  told  me  you  have  no  faith." 

"  I  don't  know.    I  must  have  faith.    I  need  faith." 

The  priest  shook  his  head.  "  No,  my  child,  we  cannot 
take  you  on  those  terms.  You  must  be  with  us  or  against 
us." 

Monica  clasped  his  hand  so  violently  that  he  drew  back 
as  he  felt  her  finger  nails.  "  Don't  push  me  away.  Don't 


AMONG  THE  YAHOOS  255 

tell  me  I  mustn't  see  him  again.  Let  me  go  back  to  him 
and  tell  him  it  must  end." 

"  You  must  do  as  you  yourself  decide.  He  is  an  occa- 
sion for  sin." 

"  Ah !  "  cried  Monica  with  exultation.  "  You  do  for- 
bid me  to  go  back." 

He  smiled  at  her  craft.  "  No,  my  child.  If  you  go 
back,  you  go  at  your  peril,  protected  only  by  the  tradi- 
tion of  your  class  and  the  moralities  of  your  education. 
No  guardian  angel  can  walk  by  your  side.  I  can  advise 
you  as  a  man;  I  cannot  govern  you  as  a  priest." 

"  But,  oh !  "  cried  Monica,  in  a  tone  of  despair,  "  father, 
you  don't  understand.  We've  done  no  harm.  Let  me 
tell  you  more." 

Monsignor  Lublin  rose  and  held  out  his  hand,  palm 
outwards. 

"  No,  my  child,  you  shall  not  add  to  your  sensual  in- 
dulgences the  voluptuousness  of  confession." 

Then  Monica  jumped  up.  "  I  see  you  won't  help  me. 
It's  all  talk;  you're  like  the  rest.  Father,  I  thought  bet- 
ter of  you.  I  hate  you!  " 

Monsignor  Lublin  bent  his  head.  "  It  grieves  me  to 
hear  you  speak  like  this,  Monica,  but  blessed  be  grief, 
for  it  sanctifies.  Good-bye.  Take  no  command  from 
me,  but  my  dear,  dear  child,  don't  you  know  quite  well 
that  you  mustn't  go.  Listen,  if  you  do  not  go  it  will  per- 
haps mean  that  faith  has  begun  to  work  in  you,  and  that 
if  you  are  victorious  it  shall  shoot  forth  the  lilies  of  Para- 
dise." 

"  Good-bye,"  said  Monica  thickly,  as  she  shook  his 
hand,  and  went  out  very  fast  with  bent  head.  No,  not 
even  the  anointed  could  help.  He  was  only  a  full  stop  in 
the  phrase  of  life. 


256  BLIND  ALLEY 

XVIII 

KALLIKRATES  sat  on  the  corner  of  his  master's  desk, 
profoundly  asleep,  profoundly  aware  of  his  surroundings. 
Paws  folded,  tail  furled,  blunt  head  deep  sunken  into  his 
heavy  ruff,  shoulders  hunched,  he  slept,  dreaming  a  world 
full  of  fleshly  lusts,  and  devoid  of  peril.  As  Sir  Hugh 
came  in  he  raised  his  eyelids  to  show  the  narrow  lunes 
of  his  eyes,  and  opening  a  rosy  mouth  gave  a  little  cry, 
half  a  welcome,  half  a  protest.  Sir  Hugh  smiled:  He 
liked  to  be  noticed  by  Kallikrates.  For  a  moment  he 
tickled  the  cat  behind  one  ear,  invaded  by  a  little  sensual 
thrill  as  the  hard  head  raised  itself  to  his  hand,  and  the 
smooth  chin  extended  more  and  more  in  an  attitude  of 
abandonment.  Then  he  laughed: 

"  Sultan !  Debauchee !  Don  Juan !  Casanova !  Pe- 
tronius !  Demetrios ! ,  Marguerite  of  Navarre  and  Maria 
Monk!  Thou  dost  contain  all  their  sensuous  souls,  oh, 
Kallikrates,  lascivious  and  epicene!  Is  this  not  for  thee 
a  world  of  velvet  and  down,  padded  against  all  shocks, 
running  with  the  milk  of  Canaan  and  the  honey  of 
Hymettus?  When  the  last  constellations  faint  and  fall, 
as  thine  own  Sussex  poet  says,  thou  shalt  neither  faint 
nor  fall."  He  poked  the  cat  suddenly  in  the  ribs:  "  Get 
up!  you  fat  yellow  pig.  Don't  you  know  there's  a  rev- 
olution going  on  in  Russia?  Don't  sit  there,  and  purr, 
and  be  superior  to  such  things.  I'll  have  no  Plato  in  this 
house  urging  me  to  moderation  and  aloofness.  What  do 
you  think  I  keep  you  for?  Charity  brat!  Not  to  sit 
there,  like  a  sham  Socrates,  pleading  by  your  inaction 
that  life  and  death  are  the  same  thing." 

Kallikrates  very  slowly  rose,  yawned  enormously, 
stretched  and  lay  down  again  on  his  side,  his  rosy  nose 
hidden  between  his  hind  paws.  Alone,  a  watchful  strip 


AMONG  THE   YAHOOS  257 

of  yellow  eye  showed  that  he  was  ready  to  bite  and  claw 
if  the  sacred  fur  of  his  belly  was  touched.  For  a  mo- 
ment Sir  Hugh  thought  only  of  his  cat's  beauty.  Then 
he  came  to  regret  that  in  the  present  times  beauty  should 
be  so  little  cared  for,  so  easily  abandoned,  when  little 
mortals  took  to  political  agitation.  "  Yet,"  he  thought, 
"  I'm  no  better  than  the  others.  If  I'd  any  sense  I'd  sit 
down  and  read  '  L 'Education  Sentimentale.'  Instead  of 
which,  here  am  I  wondering  whether  I  should  exult  be- 
cause Ahasuerus  has  fallen,  that  Tsar  whom  the  blood  of 
my  Whig  forefathers  abhors.  Instead  of  Flaubert,  I'm 
going  to  assimilate  a  large  number  of  newspapers,  to  be 
told  that  the  Tsar  was  plotting  a  separate  peace,  and  try 
to  believe  that  the  Nihilists  who  have  overthrown  him, 
Tolstoyans,  people  mixed  up  with  every  Pacifist  move- 
ment for  the  last  thirty  years,  have  broken  him  because 
they  want  to  go  on  with  the  war.  I  am  going  to  horrify 
myself  with  stories  about  Rasputin,  which  have  suddenly 
become  scandalous  now  that  they  are  advertised.  Woe 
to  me  in  my  chaos!  I  suppose  I  believe  in  royalty  and 
in  authority  —  and  yet  I  am  bidden  rejoice  because  a 
Tsar  falls,  to  ask  for  the  head  of  the  Kaiser  and  of  Fran- 
cis Josef,  the  Lord's  anointed,  all  three,  whose  fathers 
were  our  allies  against  Napoleon,  another  Lord's 
anointed,  whom  we  shut  up  at  St.  Helena.  There  must 
be  something  wrong  with  the  respect  we  bear  monarchy, 
for  we  seem  to  respect  it  only  when  it's  on  our  side.  Like 
the  heathen,  who  gives  his  idol  a  licking  if  it  doesn't  get 
what  he  wants." 

Still  he  caressed  the  harsh  fur  of  the  cat's  back.  "Kalli- 
krates,"  he  said,  "  though  you  never  speak  you  bear  wit- 
ness to  truth,  to  the  importance  of  material  things,  taste, 
smell.  You  know  that  government,  culture,  flags,  all 
those  things,  pass  above  the  common  emotions  of  man- 


258  BLIND  ALLEY 

kind;  that  a  German  tax-gatherer  is  much  the  same  as 
an  English  one;  that  people  are  much  alike,  as  unedu- 
cated, as  vain,  as  intolerant,  and  you  tell  me  that  what- 
ever flag  floats  over  your  head,  the  sun  is  as  golden, 
kisses  are  as  sweet,  and  verse  not  different  in  its  melody. 
Kallikrates,"  he  murmured,  "  if  you  were  a  man  I  don't 
think  you  would  have  joined  up." 

Then  Sir  Hugh  brought  out  his  lighter,  for  matches 
were  scarce  at  Knapenden.  As  he  struck  the  spark  the 
cat  looked  at  him,  as  if  outraged,  wrinkled  his  nose,  for 
he  hated  the  smell  of  tobacco.  Then,  as  the  long  strip  of 
tinder  dragged  by  him,  he  seized  it  with  his  teeth  and 
front  paws,  rolling  on  his  back  to  kick  it.  Sir  Hugh 
smiled :  "  Even  the  accidents  of  war  serve  thy  pleasure, 
oh,  cat!  "  But  soon  his  mood  grew  less  meditative,  and 
he  forgot  to  think,  so  absorbed  was  he  by  the  beast  who 
expended  such  ferocity  on  chasing  round  the  carpet  the 
toy  of  the  day. 

XIX 

"  I  SUPPOSE  your  ladyship  knows  that  Cradoc  has  come 
back,"  says  Mrs.  Marsden. 

"  Come  back?  "  said  Lady  Oakley.  "  How  d'you  mean, 
come  back?  So  far  as  I  know,  he's  in  prison,  right  place 
for  him;  and  the  last  I  heard  of  him  he  was  hunger- 
striking.  " 

"  Yes,  your  ladyship.  He  was,  but  they've  let  him 
out." 

"  Whatever  have  they  done  that  for?  " 

"  Well,  your  ladyship,  they're  saying  in  the  village  that 
he  wouldn't  eat,  and  they  had  to  feed  him  by  force.  They 
put  a  tube  up  his  nose  and  pumped  food  into  him  that 
way.  I  think  that's  a  nasty  thing  to  do:  don't  you  think 
so,  my  lady?  " 


AMONG  THE  YAHOOS  259 

"  I  could  think  of  nastier  things  to  do  to  conscientious 
objectors.  I  don't  see  why  they  bother  to  feed  them  at 
all.  There  was  the  food  in  his  cell,  and  if  he  chose  to 
starve  himself,  surely  that  was  his  business." 

"  Yes,  my  lady,  but  they  say  in  the  village  that  they're 
afraid  of  letting  them  do  that,  because  it  gets  into  the 
papers,  and  it  makes  a  lot  of  talk  in  Parliament,  they 
say." 

"  Talk,"  said  Lady  Oakley  savagely.  "  Yes,  you're 
right.  Talk,  talk,  there's  nothing  but  talk.  We  want  a 
Man.  The  sort  of  man  who'll  close  down  Parliament 
and  make  an  end  of  all  this  talk.  Carping  and  criti- 
cising! Fussy  little  Radicals,  and  people  who  call  them- 
selves Labour,  who'll  vote  for  anybody  if  you'll  give 
them  enough  beer.  But  never  mind  that;  d'you  mean  to 
tell  me  that  he's  running  his  shop?  " 

"  Yes,  my  lady.  And  I  wanted  to  talk  to*  your  lady- 
ship about  that,  because  Evenwood's  is  going  to  close." 

"  Yes,  I  know.  I  suppose  now  that  Evenwood's  dead 
and  that  young  Evenwood's  in  the  army  somebody  else 
will  have  the  shop.  But  I  thought  Evenwood's  sister  was 
running  it." 

"  Yes,  my  lady,  she  is.  Mrs.  Martin's  her  name,  but 
she  can't  stay;  her  husband's  a  carrier  at  Rye  and  he 
wants  her  back.  So  I  expect  they'll  close  the  shop,  and 
where  shall  I  order  the  groceries,  my  lady?  " 

"Oh!"  said  Lady  Oakley.  "  I  see.  Mrs.  Marsden, 
I  suppose  you're  not  suggesting  that  we  should  deal  with 
Cradoc?  " 

"  Oh!  no,  my  lady.  But  what  am  I  to  do?  It  takes 
such  a  long  time  getting  things  from  the  Stores." 

Lady  Oakley  became  thoughtful.  "  I'll  let  you  know 
to-night;  I  am  going  to  the  village,  and  I'll  see.  Mean- 
while don't  do  anything.  If  you  need  anything  you  can 


260  BLIND  ALLEY 

tell  Temple  to  go  and  fetch  it  in  the  car  at  Hastings.  If 
necessary  you  can  send  him  to  Scotland,  but  please  un- 
derstand that  you're  not  to  buy  as  much  as  a  bluebag 
from  Cradoc." 

Mrs.  Marsden's  account  of  the  affair  was  roughly  cor- 
rect. When  the  visiting  justices  went  over  Robertsbridge 
gaol  they  found  Cradoc  in  the  infirmary,  and  one  of  the 
justices  tried  to  make  him  "  realise  his  duty  as  an  Eng- 
lishman in  the  national  emergency."  Cradoc  did  not  say 
much;  he  was  feeling  very  weak,  for  he  had  been  forcibly 
fed  by  nasal  tube  for  nine  days  in  succession.  All  he 
remarked  was:  "  I've  made  my  case.  You  can  see  what 
proof  I'm  giving  that  I  meant  what  I  said." 

"  Yes,  I  know,"  said  the  justice,  and  discussed  at  length 
the  desirability  of  Cradoc's  accepting  alternative  employ- 
ment under  the  Pelham  Committee. 

"  I  can't  4o  it,"  said  Cradoc.  "  I'm  sorry,  but  I  can't 
accept  any  work  which  the  Government  looks  upon  as 
equivalent  to  war  work.  I'd  be  releasing  another  man 
to  fight,  and  that  would  be  the  same  thing  as  fighting  my- 
self. No,  I'd  rather  stay  here  and  die  here." 

"Oh!  nonsense,"  said  the  justice.  "Nobody  wants  to 
hurt  you.  We  only  want  you  to  be  reasonable."  Then 
he  grew  meditative.  It  was  all  very  well;  his  own  po- 
sition was  quite  clear,;  everything  was  being  done  under 
the  supervision  of  the  prison  doctor.  Still,  if  this  obsti- 
nate fellow  died,  and  he  looked  as  if  he  might  —  the 
Daily  News  and  the  Labour  papers  made  such  a  fuss 
about  this  sort  of  thing,  and  the  sentimentalists  in  the 
country  got  excited  about  it,  and  there  were  questions  in 
the  House,  and  statements,  and  all  that.  In  the  end  a 
paper  printed  an  open  letter  to  a  brutal  somebody,  very 
like  a  brutal  visiting  justice.  Very  annoying! 

Cradoc  grew  sympathetic.    "  I'm  sorry  to  be  a  nui- 


AMONG  THE  YAHOOS  261 

sance.  You'd  much  better  let  me  go.  All  I  want  is  to 
mind  my  grocer's  shop  and  do  no  harm  to  anybody.  The 
other  grocer  in  my  village  has  just  died,  I  hear,  so  mine's 
the  only  shop." 

The  justice  gave  a  perceptible  start.    "  Oh!  is  it?  "  he 
said.    "  You  say  the  other  man's  just  died?  " 
"  Yes.    My  sister  wrote  to  me  about  it  yesterday." 
"  Oh!  "  said  the  justice,  "  well,  we'll  see." 
The  Pelham  Committee  was  delighted.    It  did  not 
trouble  to  interview  Cradoc,  or  to  obtain  from  him  guar- 
antees of  good  conduct.    They  thought  it  a  great  oppor- 
tunity to  declare  that  the  unique  grocer  of  Knapenden 
was  of  national  importance,  and  at  the  same  time  to 
avoid  the  possible  scandal  of  a  conscientious  objector 
being  allowed  to  starve  himself  to  death.    So  the  prison 
gates  fell  open,  and  Cradoc  was  barred  out  into  freedom. 
It  was  a  sad  and  rather  sick  man  who  entered  the  shop 
that  spring  afternoon.     Miss  Cradoc  took  no  notice  of 
him,  measured  out  the  quarter  of  tea  that  her  customer 
wanted,  and  then  only  turned  to  him: 
"Oh!    So  it's  you." 
"  Yes.    How's  the  shop?  " 

"  So-so.     Didn't  do  well  after  you  were  took.    Still, 
I'm  carrying  on." 

The  man  sat  down  on  a  case  of  sugar.    His  legs  were 
giving  way. 

"  Feeling  queer?  "  asked  his  sister. 
"  A  bit.    Forcible  feeding's  bad  for  one's  digestion." 
"  Ah!  well,  when  you're  better  you'll  be  better." 
Yes,  old  Ethel  was  not  sentimental.     In  a  few  days 
Cradoc  recovered  some  of  his  strength,  but  he  had  ac- 
quired in  prison  a  brooding  habit,  so  he  did  not  approach 
his  old  acquaintances.    This  was  fortunate,  as  it  pre- 
vented him  from  finding  out  that  nobody  wanted  to  talk 


262  BLIND  ALLEY 

to  him.  He  passed  so  much  of  his  time  in  the  fields  round 
Ascalon  Farm,  always  hoping  to  see  Molly  Hart,  that  he 
did  not  realise  the  atmosphere  of  boycott.  It  was  his 
sister  told  him  in  the  end.  It  seemed  that  Lady  Oakley 
had  interviewed  Mrs.  Martin,  failed  to  persuade  her  to 
keep  open  Evenwood's  shop,  and  had  in  the  end  arranged 
with  her  husband,  the  Rye  carrier,  to  bring  free  of  charge, 
for  the  duration  of  the  war,  any  groceries  that  Knapenden 
might  choose  to  order.  She  had  personally  gone  round 
to  the  principal  residents  of  Villa-Land,  and  gained  a 
good  deal  of  support  for  her  views.  The  fact  that  gro- 
ceries were  a  little  cheaper  in  Rye  had  perhaps  also  some- 
thing to  do  with  the  local  decision  not  to  deal  with  Cradoc. 

"  There's  some  ain't  in  it,"  said  Miss  Cradoc.  "  Those 
who  want  pen'orths;  there's  just  that  bit  of  trade  left. 
And  there's  some  have  got  to  run  out  and  get  something 
they've  forgotten  after  the  carrier's  called.  Suppose  we 
shall  make  ends  meet.  And  if  we  don't  we  won't.  Time 
will  show." 

Cradoc  said  nothing.  The  boycott  did  not  surprise 
him:  subjected  to  universal  obloquy,  jailed,  jilted,  he  was 
not  much  interested  in  his  livelihood.  He  was  growing 
blunted;  the  Herald,  the  Workers'  Dreadnought,  which  he 
received  every  week,  together  with  occasional  pamphlets 
from  the  Hastings  Independent  Labour  Party,  and  the 
No-Conscription  Fellowship,  came  to  him  as  from  a 
strange  world,  a  place  where  men  still  hoped  to  make 
their  views  prevail  and  to  create  a  universe  where  there 
should  be  no  war  because  all  men  had  understanding. 
The  labour  and  pacifist  movements  took  place  for  him  on 
a  distant  stage,  and  he  could  not  believe  that  he  played 
a  part  in  the  play.  Once  he  thought:  "  I'm  like  an  old 
actor,  broken  down,  who  can't  take  up  his  part  again 
when  they  revive  the  old  play."  And  because  he  was 


AMONG  THE  YAHOOS  263 

human  he  thought  less  and  less  of  ideas.  He  was  con- 
tent now  to  enjoy  so  much  as  he  could  the  spring  bursting 
on  every  hedgerow,  to  eat  his  insufficient  meals,  for  the 
earnings  of  the  shop  were  barely  enough  to  keep  him  and 
his  sister.  And  he  thought  a  great  deal  of  Molly  Hart. 
Short,  square,  milk-white  Molly,  lovely,  strong  Molly; 
she  too,  he  supposed,  could  never  again  play  her  part 
when  they  revived  the  old  play. 


XX 


STEPHEN  lay  back  in  the  invalid  carriage.  The  hot 
July  morning  made  him  rather  restless ;  and  when  he  was 
restless  he  perspired,  because  he  was  rather  weak;  his  leg 
ached  too;  it  took  long  to  heal.  Louise,  who  sat  by  his 
side,  quiet  and  cool  in  her  semi-hospital  costume  of  white 
drill,  put  down  her  sewing;  as  if  instinct  told  her  what  he 
needed  she  took  the  pillow  from  his  back,  lifted  his  coat 
by  the  collar  to  give  him  air,  and  turned  the  pillow  so 
that  he  might  set  his  head  against  a  cool  surface.  He 
sank  back  contentedly.  And  Louise  took  'up  her  sewing 
without  a  word.  Then  Stephen  reflected  that  he  was 
feeling  better;  he  liked  the  silent  comfort  of  Louise's 
companionship.  She  spoke  little,  but  she  was  always 
reassuringly  there.  Also  he  could  not  resist  the  sweet- 
ness of  the  morning.  From  his  chair  on  the  south  ter- 
race he  could  see  the  marshes  gleam  green  and  melt  far 
away  into  the  darker  sea.  Below  his  feet  lay  the  ragged 
lawns,  uncut  that  year,  for  Peele  alone  was  left  of  the 
gardeners;  the  flower  beds  screamed  with  luxuriant  life, 
with  fat  red  and  yellow  begonias,  with  verbena,  spreading 
little  hands  bright  as  amethyst;  there  were  tall  helio- 
tropes, and,  at  each  corner,  broad  bushes  of  hydrangea 


264  BLIND  ALLEY 

laden  with  pale  hemispheres  tinted  as  a  maiden's  dream 
of  passion.  Irrelevantly,  he  said: 

"  It's  a  pity  you  couldn't  come  to  the  meeting.  You 
missed  mother.  She's  priceless." 

"  I'd  have  come  if  I  could,"  said  Louise,  "  only  I  was 
on  duty.  I'm  told  it  was  a  pretty  big  meeting." 

"  Well,  most  of  the  village  came  with  their  mouths 
open,  and  went  out  the  same.  The  stockbroker  from 
Villa-Land  talked  a  lot  about  being  a  Britisher.  Being 
a  naturalised  Dutchman,  he  would.  But  mother  was  top- 
ping." 

Louise  looked  t  up  and  smiled.  It  was  good  to  hear 
Stephen  talk  lightly  again.  When  he  came  back  in  April 
he  had  hardly  spoken  for  a  month.  Then  there  had  been 
outbursts  of  bitterness  that  nobody  could  understand. 
She  did  not  know  whether  it  was  worse  to  hear  him  talk 
in  unnatural  excitement,  or  to  watch  him  brood  with 
knotted  brows  that  came  down  low  over  the  high  nose. 
Now  he  Was  actually  smiling,  and  she  did  not  understand, 
until  he  nodded  towards  Sir  Hugh  who  sat  at  the  corner 
of  the  terrace  where  the  elm  threw  shade: 

"  Can  you  see  father?  He's  reading  the  Spectator.  He 
hates  every  word  of  it,  but  he  doesn't  know  that." 

"  He's  a  perfect  dear,"  said  Louise. 

"  He  is.  Somehow  the  Spectator  is  suitable  for  perfect 
dears.  So  like  a  hot-water  bottle.  No,  a  tepid  water 
bottle.  Whiggery  and  water.  But  there  you  are,  that's 
the  Oakleys  all  over.  Subscribed  to  the  Spectator  in  1830 
and  they  can't  stop.  Ah !  he's  put  it  down.  What's  that 
he's  reading  now ;  can  you  see?  " 

"  I  think  it's  the  Nation." 

Stephen  laughed.  "  Oh !  that's  much  worse.  He  agrees 
with  every  word  of  it,  and  he  hates  it.  Poor  old  father! 
It's  an  awful  fate  to  think  you're  born  to  a  thing  when 


AMONG  THE  YAHOOS  265 

you  really  worship  the  reverse.  His  tradition  is  always 
struggling  with  his  intellect.  Not  like  mother.  Mother's 
a  solid." 

"  What  d'you  mean  by  a  solid?  "  asked  Louise.  Yes, 
he  was  pretty  normal  that  day. 

"  Oh !  a  cube,  a  thing  with  angles.  No  mistake  about 
it.  Mother  knows  what  she  thinks,  except  that  she 
doesn't." 

"  Stephen,"  said  Louise,  "  you  mustn't  talk  like  that 
about  your  mother." 

"  Why  not?  It's  not  a  merit  to  be  a  mother;  in  most 
cases  it's  an  accident.  Now  I've  shocked  you.  No,  I 
suppose  I  haven't.  You're  not  the  shockable  sort.  Things 
don't  amuse  you  or  displease  you;  you  just  go  paddling 
downstream,  keeping  in  the  middle." 

"  That  sounds  very  dull,"  said  Louise,  smiling. 

"Oh!  no,  it's  so  jolly  human,  so  balanced.  You're 
rather  like  Kallikrates,  you  know,  slithering  through  life. 
And  you're  a  good-looking  couple."  For  a  moment 
Stephen  felt  inclined  to  add  a  phrase  more  tender.  Yes, 
Louise  was  very  good-looking,  with  that  piled  dark  hair, 
that  white  skin,  and  that  immense,  secure  repose.  But 
Lady  Oakley  still  filled  his  mind. 

"  By  jove,  mother  let  them  have  it  hot  and  strong.  Told 
them  they  were  thriftless,  improvident,  unpatriotic,  hinted 
they  were  disloyal,  gave  a  side  kick  to  drunkenness,  dis- 
sent, and  other  form  of  immorality,  and  took  all  their 
names,  landing  a  punch  to  the  right  and  a  punch  to  the  left, 
and  leaving  a  war  savings  certificate  stuck  to  every  face 
within  her  reach.  Mother's  topping.  Such  vim!  makes 
me  feel  quite  old."  He  joined  his  finger  tips  and  spoke  as 
if  to  himself:  "  Mother's  got  all  the  luck:  she  believes 
in  things.  Good  for  her!  She  wants  to  flog  the  con- 
scientious objectors,  to  shoot  the  pacifists,  to  hang  the 


266  BLIND  ALLEY 

profiteers,  and  as  for  the  fellows  who  trade  with  the 
enemy  there's  nothing  she  wouldn't  do!  Yes,  mother's 
got  it  bad.  This  war's  upset  her  applecart.  We've  had 
three  solid  sittings  since  I  came  back,  all  about  atrocities 
and  torpedoing,  and  flame  throwers,  and  gas.  Oh!  the 
amount  of  gas  that  has  got  into  this  house  would  clear 
Flanders.  It's  her  literature  gets  into  her  head." 

"  What  literature?  "  asked  Louise. 

"  Those  continual  doses  of  Morning  Post  and  Globe, 
with  a  touch  of  Daily  Mail,  to  make  them  bubble. 
Nothing  like  printers'  ink  to  produce  gas.  Let  alone  her 
war  books!  I  asked  her  to  send  up  something  for  me 
to  read;  I  wanted  something  mild  and  amiable  like  the 
*  Little  Flowers  of  St.  Francis  of  Assisi ',  or '  The  Rosary  ', 
or  something,  and  would  you  believe  it:  Westcott  came 
along  with  four  Kiplings,  a  Boyd  Cable,  '  Ordeal  by 
Battle  ',  '  Degenerate  Germany  ',  '  The  Beast  of  Berlin  ', 
the  complete  works  of  Ian  Hay,  the  confessions  of  nine 
spies,  eighteen  Kaiser  governesses,  five  imperial  dentists, 
and  one  royal  vet." 

"  Don't  be  silly,"  said  Louise,  laughing.  "  You  know 
quite  well  your  mother's  a  darling." 

"  She's  a  very  agitated  darling.  She  talked  to  me  yes- 
terday for  an  hour  to  demonstrate  that  this  country  was 
ruined  by  talk:  shut  up  Parliament,  shut  up  the  Cabinet, 
shut  up  the  papers,  shut  up  everything  except  Colney 
Hatch  and  the  Tower,  both  being  of  National  Impor- 
tance. Mother's  ideal  is  a  war  run  by  a  cabinet  of 
Kitcheners  who  say  '  yes  ',  or  '  no  ',  or,  on  great  provoca- 
tion '  go  to  hell.'  Sort  of  military  penny-in-the-slot 
machines.  You  just  push  in  a  vote  of  credit,  give  'em 
ten  million  men  that  you  haven't  got,  pull  the  lever  and 
out  comes  victory.  Oh!  mother's  topping.  Have  you 
heard  her  on  the  League  of  Nations?  " 


AMONG  THE  YAHOOS  267 

"  No,"  said  Louise,  "  does  she  believe  in  it?  " 

"  Of  course  she  believes  in  it.  Everybody  believes  in 
the  League  of  Nations,  though  they've  all  sworn  not  to 
have  it.  Mother's  League  of  Nations  is  a  beautiful 
thing:  conscription  all  round,  more  ships,  tariffs  on 
everything,  and  no  truck  with  Germany  for  a  hundred 
years.  No  German  in  the  League  of  Nations.  Every- 
body to  be  nice  and  friendly  and  keep  their  powder  dry. 
Germany  to  be  completely  wiped  out,  after  which  she's 
to  pay  the  total  cost  of  the  war.  She  may  keep  the  rest 
of  the  profits,  unless  she  has  to  hand  those  over  to  main- 
tain a  friendly  international  league  that  she's  not  to  be 
let  into.  You  see,  mother's  got  no  idea  of  an  evolving 
world.  Thinks  motors  immoral.  She  doesn't  imagine 
that  anything's  ever  going  to  alter,  and  doesn't  want  it  to. 
Republics  could  pop  up  all  round  her,  like  mushrooms. 
She  wouldn't  see  it  made  any  difference.  All  round  her 
trade  unions  are  forming,  but  she  doesn't  see  it.  Gov- 
ernments take  over  railways  and  mines,  probably  for 
good;  she  doesn't  see  it.  As  it  was  in  the  beginning, 
forever  shall  be.  You'd  surprise  mother  if  you  told  her 
there  isn't  a  Board  of  Trade,  but  she'd  fight  tooth  and 
nail  to  prevent  your  abolishing  it." 

"  I  think  you're  very  disrespectful,  Stephen,"  said 
Louise.  "  Still,  we  mustn't  be  hard  on  you.  You're  a 
spoilt  child.  I  suppose  we  must  make  allowances  for 
you." 

"You  needn't.  I  got  knocked  over,  but  I'm  tough. 
They  started  toughening  me  the  first  day.  It's  a  tan- 
ning process,  the  army.  No  sensitiveness  allowed  there. 
I  remember  my  first  bayonet  instructor.  He  was  an  ex- 
pug,  that  is  boxer.  That  chap  was  the  one  to  develop 
the  innate  gallantry  and  chivalry  of  youth.  He  used  to 
lecture  us  on  the  spirit  of  the  bayonet.  '  I've  only  two 


268  BLIND  ALLEY 

watchwords/  he  used  to  say,  '  one  is  that  fighting  is  the 
profession  of  the  soldier,  and  the  other  one  is:  no  prison- 
ers. You've  got  to  make  it  a  rule  not  to  leave  behind 
you  a  man  unkilled.  If  you're  any  good  at  your  job 
you'll  kill  so  many  that  you  won't  be  able  to  count  them 
in  your  memory.' " 

"  Don't,"  said  Louise. 

"  Yes,  that's  just  like  you  civilians.  You  sit  there  and 
cheer  when  we  go  out,  and  hang  out  the  bunting,  so  that 
we  may  be  in  fine  fettle  when  we  go  out  to  scatter  the 
Hun's  guts,  but  you'd  rather  not  hear  about  it,  thank 
you.  We've  just  taken  Vimy  Ridge,  and  the  French  are 
pouring  over  Chemin  des  Dames.  D'you  think  that  was 
done  by  the  kid-gloved  Dandy  Fifth?  You  people  who 
let  war  happen,  I'd  like  you  to  know  that  when  the  job's 
done,  the  field  is  like  the  devil's  nursery,  where  some- 
body's been  breaking  open  men  like  toys,  to  see  what's 
inside." 

At  that  moment  Lady  Oakley  came  down  the  steps, 
very  big  and  very  handsome  in  her  blue  linen  coat  and 
skirt  and  atrocious  country  hat.  She  caught  his  last 
words. 

"  Stephen,  you  mustn't  get  excited.  You  shouldn't  talk 
about  the  war;  you  know  quite  well  it's  bad  for  you. 
Though  heaven  knows  there's  nothing  else  to  talk  about 
in  these  days,  and  the  way  things  are  going  there  might 
never  be  anything  else  to  talk  about.  If  only  somebody 
would  handle  the  thing  properly!  There  isn't  a  man  in 
the  Cabinet  who  isn't  tender  to  the  Hun.  There  isn't 
one  of  them  doesn't  soak  his  handkerchief  when  one  asks 
why  they  don't  start  bombing  Hun  towns." 

"  I  expect  we'd  bomb  'em  if  we  could,"  said  Stephen. 
"  I  assure  you  there's  no  tenderness  in  the  Flying  Corps." 

"  I'm  not  saying  anything  against  the  Flying  Corps. 


AMONG  THE  YAHOOS  269 

The  darlings!  "  Lady  Oakley  grew  thoughtful  for  a 
moment;  she  adored  second  lieutenants  for  their  downy 
youth;  their  baby  mannishness  aroused  in  her  an  emo- 
tion half  maternal,  half  sensuous.  "  No,  they're  all 
right;  it's  the  people  at  the  top,  the  people  who  let  that 
fellow  Henderson  go  to  Petrograd  to  hobnob  with  a  gang 
of  anarchists  in  German  pay.  I  wonder  why  Labour 
can't  mind  its  own  business  and  get  on  with  the  war. 
That's  all  we  ask  of  them.  We  don't  ask  them  to  fight, 
all  those  millions  of  cowards  in  munition  factories.  We 
only  ask  'em  to  get  on  with  their  work  and  take  their 
fifteen  pounds  a  week  while  the  other  men  are  dying 
for  'em  at  a  shilling  a  day.  All  we  ask  is  that  they 
should  keep  their  mouths  shut.  It  isn't  much." 

Sir  Hugh  looked  up,  for  Lady  Oakley  spoke  loudly. 
He  joined  the  group. 

"  It's  all  very  well,  Lena,"  he  said,  feeling  rather 
grated,  "  but  Labour  isn't  a  sort  of  machine  worked  by 
a  button.  Working  men  have  got  their  own  ideas  like 
you  and  I." 

"  We  don't  want  any  of  their  ideas.  We  only  want  'em 
to  do  their  work.  When  working  men  get  ideas  they 
strike.  Fancy  striking  in  the  middle  of  a  war  like  this! 
But  it's  always  the  same  thing;  if  we  were  to  shoot  one 
out  of  every  ten  there 'd  be  no  strikes." 

"  Except  among  those  who  had  to  do  the  shooting," 
said  Stephen  suddenly. 

"  Nonsense,"  said  Lady  Oakley.  "  There  are  some 
good  men  among  the  Labour  Party  itself.  Look  at  the 
seamen,  for  instance ;  they've  got  good  leaders  in  Captain 
Tupper  and  Havelock  Wilson;  they  won't  stand  any 
pacifist  nonsense;  they  won't  carry  that  traitor  Hender- 
son to  Stockholm.  That's  the  spirit  which  made  England 
what  she  is." 


270  BLIND  ALLEY 

"  It's  not  much  to  claim,"  said  Sir  Hugh,  with  a  bitter 
little  smile.  "  I  shouldn't  wonder  if  you  were  right,  Lena. 
It's  just  that  spirit  of  blunt  antagonism,  the  wrong-head- 
edness  of  people  like  the  seamen,  who  can't  unite  with 
their  fellows,  who  like  to  belong  to  the  Labour  Party 
and  flout  the  verdict  of  the  majority  because  it  didn't 
suit  them;  it's  just  that  anarchistic  spirit  has  made  Eng- 
land what  she  is  —  a  dog  kennel  with  half  the  dogs  snarl- 
ing and  the  other  half  asleep." 

"  Father,"  said  Stephen,  "  I  think  you're  a  pacifist. 
Be  careful.  It'll  grow  on  you.  In  a  few  months  you'll 
be  like  an  Evening  News  cartoon,  wear  a  white  tie,  elas- 
tic-sided boots,  spectacles,  and  on  the  top  the  mad  hatter's 
feather." 

Everybody  smiled.  All  were  glad  that  Stephen  took 
things  lightly,  but  as  Lady  Oakley  led  Sir  Hugh  apart 
he  went  rather  resentfully.  All  this  talk  of  reprisals, 
revenges,  forcible  prevention  of  free  conferences,  these 
cries  for  the  coercion  of  individuals,  disturbed  and  of- 
fended him.  So  he  was  glad  when  he  found  that  Lady 
Oakley  wanted  to  talk  of  a  domestic  matter. 

"  Hugh,"  she  said,  "  do  you  think  we'd  better  have 
Mr.  March  down  again  next  month?  " 

"  Why  not?    He's  rather  a  nice  boy." 

"  Oh !  I've  nothing  against  him.  Only  —  you  remem- 
ber that  Sylvia  got  us  to  ask  him  down  on  his  last  leave, 
and  I  don't  say  there's  anything  in  it,  but  this  village 
talks,  like  all  villages.  They  were  about  together  a  good 
deal,  and  there's  some  sort  of  story." 

"What  sort  of  story?" 

"  Nothing  much.  Only  Westcott  tells  me  that  Mrs. 
Farcet  tells  her,  and  so  on,  that  he  kissed  her  in  the 
copse.  Somebody  saw  them." 

"  Oh!  nonsense,"  said  Sir  Hugh.    "  Sylvia  wouldn't  do 


AMONG  THE  YAHOOS  271 

a  thing  like  that.  Why!  Andy  was  down  only  a  month 
ago.  Besides,  women  don't  do  that  sort  of  thing  when 
their  husbands  are  in  France.  It's  not  done." 

"  I'm  not  so  sure,"  said  Lady  Oakley.  "  Sylvia's  a 
funny  girl,  and  the  times  are  exciting." 

Sir  Hugh  grew  acid.  "  Well,  if  you  really  feel  that 
we've  got  to  give  in  to  malignant  gossip,  let's  give  in. 
Don't  have  him  down.  I  suppose  you'll  tell  Sylvia  the 
reason?  " 

"  Certainly  not,"  said  Lady  Oakley.  "  I  shall  tell  her 
we  don't  like  him,  that's  all." 

"Perfectly  absurd,"  said  Sir  Hugh.  But  after  his 
wife  had  left  him  he  suddenly  remembered  that  frosty 
January  day,  the  vision  of  Sylvia  driving  a  young  officer 
in  a  car.  Now  he  came  to  think  of  it,  it  was  a  very 
young  man,  and  he  rather  thought  a  fair-haired  man. 
And  she  had  been  with  him  a  good  deal  on  his  last  leave. 
He  supposed  it  would  be  all  right.  Tradition  told  him 
that  it  was  natural  things  should  be  all  right.  Then  his 
mind  took  a  leap:  supposing  it  wasn't  all  right?  suppos- 
ing Jervaulx  found  out?  supposing  he  shot  the  pair  of 
them?  They  did  that  sort  of  thing  nowadays,  and  juries 
let  people  off.  It  was  the  new  law:  if  a  man's  wife  was 
unfaithful  while  he  served  abroad,  he  wouldn't  be  con- 
victed for  shooting  her  or  her  lover  —  as  if  a  new  spirit 
had  got  into  Englishmen,  as  if  they  were  growing  so  used 
to  blood  and  death  that  human  life  was  becoming  less 
sacred;  as  if  it  was  understood  that  with  the  spread  of 
barbarism  over  the  world  every  man  should  carry  his 
life  in  his  hands.  Would  this  war  smash  all  reserves  — 
break  down  all  sympathies  —  blunt  every  shade  of  feel- 
ing? If  it  went  on  long  enough  would  it  resolve  man 
into  his  component  parts,  the  tiger  and  the  fox? 


BLIND  ALLEY 


XXI 

WHEN  Sir  Hugh  arrived  at  half-past  six,  Lee  met  him 
in  the  hall,  and  with  an  air  of  sacred  gravity  told  him 
that  Lady  Oakley  wanted  to  see  him  as  soon  as  he  came 
in.  He  found  his  wife  in  her  bedroom  looking  worried, 
and  surrounded  by  garments  which  she  had  obviously 
pulled  out  at  random.  Surprisingly  she  came  up  to  him 
and  put  her  arms  round  him  with  an  air  of  dependence. 

"  Oh!  Hugh,  I'm  so  glad  you've  come  back.  I'd  have 
wired  for  you  if  I'd  known  where  you  were." 

"  I've  been  at  the  Board  all  the  afternoon.  But  what's 
the  matter?  " 

"  Westcott's  going  to  have  a  child." 

"  Good  heavens  !  "  said  Sir  Hugh  as  he  sat  down  heav- 
ily on  the  bed.  The  information  amazed  him.  He  liked 
Westcott,  her  prettiness  and  the  smile  which  she  always 
had  for  him  ;  it  was  alluring,  and  Sir  Hugh  was  too  inno- 
cent to  understand  that  Westcott  was  not  stingy  of 
smiles.  Also  he  looked  upon  women  as  remote  from 
passion.  It  was  not  the  sort  of  thing  he  thought  about, 
and  so  it  seemed  incredible,  this  news.  "  How  did  it  hap- 
pen? "  he  asked. 

"  How  am  I  to  tell  how  it  happened?  "  said  Lady  Oak- 
ley. "  Anyhow,  it  has  happened." 

"  Are  you  quite  sure?  "  asked  Sir  Hugh,  still  clinging 
to  his  theory  of  feminine  innocence. 

"  Well,  she's  owned  up,  if  that's  any  good.  It  all  came 
out  this  afternoon,  just  after  lunch.  As  I  was  going  out 
into  the  plantation  I  heard  a  lot  of  noise  in  the  kitchen. 
I  wouldn't  have  said  anything,  but  I  heard  screams.  So 
I  went  back  to  the  drawing-room  and  rang  the  bell,  and 
Marsden  came  in.  She's  a  silly  old  thing.  She  was 
behaving  like  a  bit  of  blancmange  that  isn't  feeling  well. 


AMONG  THE   YAHOOS  273 

All  she  could  say  was:  '  The  hussy  ', '  The  brazen  hussy/ 
So  at  last  I  went  into  the  kitchen,  and  there  was  Westcott 
lying  on  her  back,  screaming  and  kicking." 

"  Hysterical,  I  suppose,"  said  Sir  Hugh.    "  Poor  girl." 

"  Yes,  she  was  hysterical.  Still  I  managed  to  quiet 
her  down  after  a  while,  and  she  owned  up.  I  don't  think 
it  would  have  come  out  just  now  if  it  hadn't  been  for  the 
inquest.  It  seems  to  have  upset  her.  She's  been  crying 
all  the  afternoon,  and  twice  she's  had  another  fit  of  hys- 
terics, during  which  she  screams:  '  He's  got  black  marks 
on  his  neck  where  the  fingers  went  in.'  I  expect  it's 
preyed  on  her  imagination." 

"  I'm  not  surprised,"  said  Sir  Hugh ;  "  it's  a  horrid  busi- 
ness. I  suppose  you  haven't  seen  the  details?  I  bought 
the  Examiner  at  Ashford.  As  the  inquest  was  yesterday, 
I  expect  they'll  have  the  story  in  full." 

Together  they  read  the  report  of  the  inquest.  The 
details  were  few,  but  painful.  It  had  been  held  over  the 
body  of  a  Flying  Corps  officer  found  in  the  copse  a  little 
way  south  of  Policeman's  House.  Very  little  was  known 
of  him,  except  that  he  was  on  short  leave  and  had  for- 
merly been  a  jockey.  The  medical  evidence  showed  that 
the  man  had  been  strangled.  There  was  no  clue  of  any 
kind.  Verdict,  murder  against  a  person  or  some  persons 
unknown. 

"Yes,"  said  Sir  Hugh,  "I  suppose  it's  upset  her;  but 
for  that  we  might  not  have  known  for  a  month  or  two. 
I  wonder  who  the  man  was.  If  we  could  find  him  perhaps 
he'd  marry  her." 

Lady  Oakley  smiled.  "Well,  Hugh,  it  seems  unkind 
to  joke  about  it,  but  if  Westcott  were  to  marry  every 
man  we  might  suspect,  she'd  have  to  start  a  harem." 

"  Not  really!  "  said  Sir  Hugh.  He  was  most  surprised. 
He  could  just  imagine  that  a  woman  might  fall  through 


274  BLIND  ALLEY 

love,  but  the  idea  of  promiscuity  was  incredible  to  him. 
One  heard  of  that  sort  of  thing,  but  it  didn't  really 
happen. 

"  Yes,  really.  IVe  suspected  lots  of  people,  Temple, 
and  even  Ratby,  and  oh !  any  of  the  boys  in  the  village." 

"  Have  you  asked  her?  " 

"  Yes.  She  won't  tell.  When  I  ask  her  she  only 
screams." 

"  Poor  girl,"  said  Sir  Hugh.  "  We  must  see  what  we 
can  do  for  her.  Let  me  see,  now  I  come  to  think  about 
it,  wasn't  young  Keele  fond  of  her?  " 

"  I  think  so,  but  surely  you  can't  expect  Keele  to 
marry  her  after  the  way  she's  behaved  while  he's  been 
out  in  France?  " 

"  No,"  said  Sir  Hugh  meditatively.  He  would  have 
liked  to  think  it  possible  that  Keele  should  come  back, 
forgive  his  sweetheart  and  ennoble  their  marriage  by  his 
forgiveness.  It  would  have  been  so  romantic.  "  No,  I 
suppose  not.  Poor  Keele!  I  suppose  he  knows.  I  didn't 
realise.  I  met  him  only  a  quarter  of  an  hour  ago  as  I 
drove  up  from  the  station  and  stopped  to  say  a  few  words 
to  him.  He  seems  to  be  in  a  queer  state.  You'd  have 
thought  he'd  have  been  full  of  buck,  now  he's  been  men- 
tioned in  despatches  and  has  just  got  a  commission." 

"  Has  he?  "  cried  Lady  Oakley. 

"  Yes,  didn't  you  know?  It  isn't  only  reckless  gallan- 
try, and  all  that  sort  of  thing,  but  the  fellow's  got  brains. 
You  should  see  the  villagers  round  him ;  they  don't  know 
whether  to  call  him  '  Alf  '  or  '  Sir.'  But  he  doesn't  seem 
to  be  enjoying  it;  he  hardly  said  anything  when  I  asked 
him  how  he  was  getting  on,  and  how  he  liked  it  out  there. 
He  seemed  stunned.  I  put  it  down  to  what  he'd  been 
through,  but  obviously  he  must  have  heard  about  West- 
cott.  That's  why  he's  so  upset." 


AMONG  THE  YAHOOS  275 

"  When  did  Keele  come  back?  "  asked  Lady  Oakley 
thoughtfully. 

"  I  don't  know.    He  must  have  been  back  a  few  days." 

"  I  suppose  he's  staying  at  Stoat's  Farm  with  his 
father?  " 

"Yes.  That's  only  half  a  mile  from  Policeman's 
House.  Think  of  it,  Lena !  Before  he  went  out  I  expect 
he  used  to  meet  Westcott  in  the  evening  in  the  very 
copse  where  that  man  was  murdered.  Poor  young 
fellow!" 

Lady  Oakley  said  nothing  for  a  long  time.  Her  mind, 
sharper  than  her  husband's,  worked  on  the  mystery. 
Then  at  last  she  contented  herself  with  only  guessing. 
Was  it  not  better  not  to  know?  When  these  terminations 
satisfied  her  sense  of  justice,  and  her  sense  of  romance? 
She  was  not  afraid  of  Sir  Hugh's  sagacity.  He  didn't 
think  about  those  things.  No,  indeed,  for  he  said: 

"  What  are  we  going  to  do  about  Westcott?  I'm  afraid 
we  can't  keep  her.  It  would  make  so  much  trouble  in 
the  village." 

"  No,  we  can't  keep  her,"  said  Lady  Oakley.  "  The 
poor  thing!  we  must  do  something.  I  think  I'll  go  up 
to  town  to-morrow  and  see  if  we  can  get  her  into  a  home 
where  she'll  be  properly  treated.  And  then,  perhaps, 
when  the  baby's  been  put  out  to  nurse  with  some  decent 
people,  I  can  find  her  a  situation.  I  don't  think  I  can 
have  her  back,  but  we  must  see  she's  all  right." 

"  Yes,"  said  Sir  Hugh.  "  That's  the  best  thing.  We 
must  do  all  we  can." 

"  I'll  just  go  and  see  if  she's  asleep,"  said  Lady  Oakley. 
"  I'll  tell  her  that  we'll  give  her  the  baby  linen.  That'll 
cheer  her  up." 

Soon  Lady  Oakley  sat  in  Westcott 's  bedroom,  while 
the  girl  wept  and  kissed  her  hand.  The  older  woman 


276  BLIND  ALLEY 

felt  moved  and  sorry  for  such  distress ;  and  from  time  to 
time  she  smoothed  the  girl's  hair,  assuring  her  that  every- 
thing would  be  all  right. 


XXII 

"  I'M  losing  my  will,"  thought  Monica.  She  was  sit- 
ting upon  a  heap  of  rugs  in  the  foreman's  shanty,  knees 
hunched  up,  chin  in  hands.  Cottenham  had  just  left  her. 
She  wondered  what  would  happen.  Her  fate,  she  knew, 
was  not  within  her  government.  Perhaps  it  was  not  even 
within  the  power  of  his  self-control.  Perhaps  their  two 
destinies  had  come  under  the  sway  of  an  eternal  force. 
Far  away  she  heard  the  clang  of  the  palisade  door. 
Gone!  After  such  a  little  time.  Perhaps  it  was  the 
shortness  of  the  time  that  made  everything  between  them 
so  urgent  and  maybe  more  exquisite.  She  closed  her 
eyes,  recreating  the  last  half  hour,  and  gave  herself  over 
to  a  day  dream  where  fugitive  memories  struggled  to 
overcome  harsh  sensations.  She  remembered  thingst  he 
had  said: 

"  It  doesn't  look  as  if  the  war  would  last  much  longer 
now.  You  see,  now  the  Reichstag  has  accepted  '  no 
annexations  and  indemnities  ',  we  ought  to  move  towards 
peace.  Poor  Mr.  Hughes!  He  will  miss  his  war." 

She  smiled  in  her  dreams.  When  he  said  that,  with  the 
nice  ironic  smile  she  liked,  he  had  played  with  her  fingers, 
one  by  one.  Then  later: 

"  Then  you  and  I  —  well,  just  you  and  I.  We'll  be 
free." 

Free,  yes,  free  to  do  what?  The  sensuous  feeling  left 
her  for  a  moment  as  she  remembered  their  conversation, 
not  a  very  pleasant  one. 


AMONG  THE  YAHOOS  277 

"  I'll  be  able  to  get  about  then,"  he  said.  "  Monica, 
what  are  you  going  to  do  after  the  war?  " 

"  I  don't  know.    Go  back  to  Knapenden,  I  suppose." 

"  You  can't  do  that.    We'd  lose  each  other." 

She  did  not  reply.  If  they  were  not  to  lose  each  other, 
it  must  be  because  he  prevented  it.  What  could  she  do? 
He  seemed  to  feel  this. 

"  We  must  make  a  life,  you  and  I.  Can't  you  get 
free?  Wouldn't  your  people  let  you  come  up  to  town 
to  stay?  " 

"  I  don't  think  so.  Father  thinks  he  loves  town,  but 
he  always  goes  back  to  Knapenden  after  ten  days." 

"  But  what  shall  we  do?  "  said  Cottenham.  "  I  want 
—  oh !  Monica,  don't  you  see  we've  got  to  make  a  life  for 
each  other,  you  and  I,  to  see  each  other  every  dayy  freely, 
for  a  long  time,  and  — "  She  closed  her  eyes  at  the 
thought.  "  And  give  so  much  to  each  other  that  there  is 
nothing  more  to  give." 

For  a  moment  she  lay  sunken  in  a  reverie.  She  aban- 
doned herself  to  this  dream  of  the  future,  though  she 
suspected  that  it  was  impossible.  He  couldn't  leave 
Rochester:  she  couldn't  leave  Knapenden.  He  couldn't 
marry  her.  Were  they  going  on  like  this?  And  after- 
wards? Were  they  going  to  have  stolen  meetings  in 
motor  cars  and  woods?  No!  she  knew  how  racking  were 
those  short  interviews.  Ah!  if  both  lived  in  London, 
there  would  be  time  and  opportunity,  and  she  smiled  at 
the  thought  of  the  clandestine  which  begins  in  delight  and 
ends  in  disappointment.  But  she  did  not  know  that. 
All  she  knew  was  that  this  was  a  dream.  She  found  it 
easier  to  dream  than  to  think.  That  day  her  weakness 
had  almost  been  overcome  by  his  ardour,  and  indeed  it 
was  her  weakness  rather  than  her  strength  that  defeated 
him.  She  tried  to  remember  the  scene,  but  was  conscious 


278  BLIND  ALLEY 

only  of  the  touch  of  his  hands,  of  the  brilliant  eyes  whose 
look  she  could  not  meet.  She  remembered  a  moment. 

"  How  delicate  your  hands  are,"  he  had  said,  and  began 
twisting  her  wrist.  "  One  could  snap  your  hand  off,"  he 
said.  "  I'd  like  to  do  it.  I  like  hurting  you.  I  like 
pulling  your  hair  and  twisting  your  ears.  I  like  to  see 
you  wince  as  I  hurt  you,  and  then  feel  you  soften  and 
expand  under  a  kiss.  I'd  like  to  do  grotesque  things  to 
you,  swing  you  round  and  round  by  one  ankle  and  throw 
you  down  in  a  tumbled  heap.  I'd  like  to  throw  you  into 
a  pond  and  haul  you  out  with  your  hair  full  of  mud  and 
green  slime  —  and  cover  you  then  with  more  ardent 
caresses  because  you'd  be  more  mine  in  the  grotesqueness 
I  had  created.  You're  a  lovely  thing  to  destroy  and 
spoil." 

"  Don't,"  she  murmured. 

"  Don't  what? "  he  asked,  taking  a  sensual  mental 
pleasure  in  the  idea  of  forcing  her  to  plead. 

"  Don't  frighten  me,"  she  whispered. 

"  What  are  you  frightened  of  ?  "  he  asked. 

She  did  not  reply,  and  he  liked  to  think  as  he  held  her 
with  a  greater  security  and  a  coarser  enjoyment  that  she 
was  afraid  of  herself.  She  shrank  again  as  she  dreamed. 
She  realised  that  it  was  almost  impossible  they  should 
make  a  life  together.  All  that  he  had  aroused  he  had 
aroused  in  vain.  She  had  not  the  liberty  to  become  his 
slave.  But  again  she  found  that  she  could  not  think  of 
the  future.  She  could  not  think  at  all;  she  simply  sur- 
rendered to  her  memories  of  sensations,  the  feeling  of 
his  crisp  hair  against  her  cheek,  the  scent  of  Egyptian 
tobacco  in  his  kisses,  the  weight  and  hardness  of  his 
embrace. 

Cottenham,  too,  carried  with  him  a  sense  of  doom. 
As  the  car  whirred  along  the  Maidstone  Road,  his  mind 


AMONG  THE  YAHOOS  279 

worked  more  easily  than  hers.  Manlike,  as  soon  as  he 
escaped  from  physical  sensations  he  was  rid  of  them,  and 
could  think  coolly  of  the  condition  of  his  intrigue,  or  of 
a  business  problem,  or  politics.  Things,  he  knew,  were 
invincibly  coming  to  some  solution.  Not  to  a  clear  solu- 
tion. Being  reluctant  to  give  up  anything  he  wanted,  he 
would  not  tell  himself  that  conditions  were  such  as  to 
part  them.  They  could  not  live  in  the  same  place ;  they 
could  not  make  a  common  life.  Accident  might  create 
between  them  a  complete  link,  and  he  knew  that  would 
be  hideous,  for  they  would  be  tied  together  by  a  chain  so 
long  that  it  would  part  as  well  as  unite  them.  "  Oh !  " 
he  thought,  "what  a  mess  we're  in!  If  only  she  were 
another  sort  of  girl!  But  she's  not  a  working  girl.  I 
can't  take  her  away  from  her  people,  and  set  her  up  in  a 
cottage  outside  Chatham.  She  wouldn't,  she  couldn't. 
But  then?  I  say  after  the  war  — but  what  after  the 
war?  "  He  knew  that  the  war  was  their  bond,  that 
nothing  could  come  after  the  war.  It  had  brought  them 
together;  it  had  not  given  them  to  each  other,  and  it 
could  not,  unless  they  were  ready  to  pay  the  heavy  price 
of  Tantalus,  of  always  desiring  and  fulfilling  in  occa- 
sional half-hours,  in  precarious  security,  in  places  where 
there  was  neither  comfort  nor  ease.  Complications! 
Yes,  that's  what  she  was  bringing  him,  complications. 
He  thought  of  Julia.  Why  couldn't  he  be  content  with 
Julia?  He  loved  Julia,  and  somehow  he  knew  that  he 
did  not  love  Monica.  But  yet,  he  loved  Monica  because 
she  was  difficult,  and  he  did  not  love  Julia,  for  she  was 
inevitable.  Yet,  he  did  not  love  Monica,  for  the  difficulty 
of  her  irritated  him,  and  he  loved  Julia  because  she  pre- 
sented no  difficulty,  put  up  no  dam  to  the  current  of  his 
passions.  Yet,  he  loved  Monica  because  the  impossi- 
bility of  owning  her  made  it  easy  to  desire  her,  and  he 


280  BLIND   ALLEY 

did  not  love  Julia,  because  the  certainty  of  owning  her 
prevented  him  from  desiring. 

"  I'm  sick  of  it,"  he  said.  "  I  think  I'll  cut  clear  of  ' 
both  of  them,  and  go  to  America."  Then  he  sneered  at 
himself:  "And  what '11  you  do  in  America,  you  ass? 
You'll  fall  in  love  with  somebody,  and  then  with  some- 
body else.  Frank,  old  fellow,  you've  pitched  on  a  rotten 
hobby.  Why  didn't  you  go  in  for  gardening?  " 

The  sense  of  doom  accentuated  itself  a  fortnight  later, 
when  he  passed  three  days  in  the  New  Forest,  where 
Julia  and  the  children  were  spending  the  summer.  Julia 
was  so  beautiful,  in  her  linen  gowns,  nearly  always  in 
green,  and  running  through  the  trees  like  a  wood  nymph. 
She  had  been  delightful,  too,  because  they  were  alone  in 
a  house  in  the  woods.  She  liked  having  him  alone.  She 
liked  to  wake  up  with  him,  to  walk  with  him  in  the 
morning,  to  see  him  there  at  meals,  and  to  watch  him 
playing  with  the  children;  in  the  evening  she  liked  to 
brood  over  him,  to  feel  that  in  another  two  hours  he  would 
be  still  more  alone  with  her,  more  hers,  that  she  could 
look  down  upon  his  head  on  the  pillow,  and  if  she  liked 
bend  down  and  caress  him  as  a  tigress  nuzzles  her  cub. 
Cottenham  enjoyed  this  enthralment,  for  there  was  in 
him  something  feminine  that  surrendered.  As  he  watched 
her  one  afternoon,  while  she  read,  he  found  beauty  in  the 
scene;  his  lovely,  assured  wife;  Lucretia  and  Diana  pur- 
suing each  other  and  screaming,  Rupert  on  his  rug  mak- 
ing desperate  efforts  to  rise  to  his  feet,  and  roaring  with 
laughter  every  time  he  collapsed  on  his  fat  stomach. 

"  There  is  the  truth  of  life,"  he  thought.  "  To  enjoy 
all  that  is  easily  graceful.  The  sight  of  lovely  women, 
yet  not  the  stress  of  loving  them ;  pictures  and  books,  yet 
not  the  agony  of  trying  to  achieve  art;  little  children 
that  come  up  as  flowers.  To  get  older,  to  get  fat,  to  get 


AMONG  THE  YAHOOS  281 

bald,  and  still  to  know  how  to  smile."  But  through  his 
aesthetic  quietism  pierced  the  eternal  cry  of  adventurous 
desire  that  will  not  die.  "I  want  Dead  Sea  fruit/'  he 
thought,  "  and  what  shall  I  do  if  I  don't  get  it?  " 


XXIII 

"  BRAUNSTEIN  and  Zederblum  have  bolted,"  s^aid  Lady 
Oakley,  looking  up  from  The  Times. 

11  Who  are  they?  "  said  Sir  Hugh. 

"They  like  to  call  themselves  Trotsky  and  Lenine," 
said  Lady  Oakley.  "  Of  course  they're  only  German 
agents  paid  to  stir  up  trouble  for  Kerensky.  This  paper 
says  that  it's  been  proved  they  took  German  money. 
Now  they've  been  found  out,  and  they've  bolted.  They 
call  it  Bolshevism.  I  call  it  German  gold." 

Sir  Hugh  reflected  for  a  moment.  "  Well,"  he  said, 
"  I  don't  see  why  they  shouldn't  take  German  gold.  So 
far  as  I  understand  it,  they  want  to  upset  the  Russian 
government;  they  want  money.  Does  it  matter  where 
they  get  it  from?  Besides,  I'm  not  as  clear  as  all  that 
that  it's  German  money." 

"  Anyhow,  it's  tainted  money,"  said  Lady  Oakley. 
"  You  don't  seem  to  remember  that  Kerensky  upset  the 
Tsar  because  the  Tsar  wanted  to  make  a  separate  peace. 
So  do  these  Bolshevists.  And  it's  not  the  moment  when 
Korniloff  and  Brusiloff  have  just  been  trying  to  advance, 
when  the  papers  are  full  of  the  letters  between  the  Tsar 
and  the  Kaiser,  showing  that  the  Tsar  has  been  trying 
to  sell  the  country  all  along.  Of  course,  all  Russia's  sold 
to  the  Germans.  They've  only  bought  half  England  as 
it  is,  but  I  suppose  they'll  get  the  rest  before  they've 
done." 


282  BLIND  ALLEY 

"  Lena,  I  do  wish  you  didn't  think  everybody  was  a 
traitor,  and  that  everybody  was  bought." 

"  Well,  so  they  are." 

"  You  say  these  things  without  any  evidence.  I  be- 
lieve Lenine  and  the  other  man  have  been  agitating  against 
the  Tsar  for  twenty  years.  I  don't  like  their  politics  any 
more  than  you  do;  that's  not  the  same  thing  as  saying 
they're  German  agents." 

"  Everybody  who  wants  to  stop  the  war  is  a  German 
agent." 

"But,  good  heavens!  "  cried  Sir  Hugh,  rather  angrily, 
"  even  the  Germans  want  to  stop  the  war  now." 

"  Of  course  they  do,"  said  Lady  Oakley,  "  now  they 
know  they're  not  going  to  win  it." 

Sir  Hugh  paused  for  a  moment.  Yes,  there  was  some- 
thing in  that.  This  was  August,  1917,  and  for  the  first 
two  years  the  German  papers  had  talked  of  nothing  but 
annexing  half  Europe.  Now  the  Reichstag  had  passed  a 
resolution  asking  for  peace  without  annexations  or  indem- 
nities. Looked  like  the  devil  was  sick. 

"Yes,  I  quite  agree,  but  still  a  fact  is  a  fact.  The 
Germans  aren't  trying  to  annex  anything  now." 

"  Give  them  a  chance,"  said  Lady  Oakley.  "  It's  a 
trap;  that's  all;  it's  a  peace  trap.  You  can't  believe  a 
word  they  say.  There's  only  one  thing  to  do:  beat  'em. 
Then  we'll  talk  about  no  annexations  and  indemnities." 

Sir  Hugh  did  not  reply.  She  was  so  absolutely  right, 
and  yet,  she  ought  to  be  absolutely  wrong.  So  he  went 
out,  and  walked  across  the  marsh.  Things  looked  queer 
just  then,  and  so  many  illusions  were  falling.  The  Meso- 
potamia Report  had  come  out,  and  he  was  still  filled 
with  a  sense  of  shocked  horror,  for  his  class  was  shown 
incompetent,  lacking  in  foresight,  lacking  in  humanity. 
This  picture  of  high  Indian  officials  and  regular  officers 


AMONG  THE   YAHOOS  283 

neglecting  their  duty,  sheltering  behind  each  other,  sick- 
ened him.  He  wondered  whether  his  class  was  being 
sentenced.  But  were  other  classes  better?  What  was  one 
to  believe?  Were  the  business  men  any  better  —  with 
their  lies  to  make  twopence,  and  the  beastly  snobbery 
that  caused  them  to  tumble  over  one  another,  pay  the 
expenses  of  a  party,  and  buy  peerages?  A  depression 
fell  over  him.  He  had  been  thinking  a  great  deal  of  the 
Reichstag  resolution;  by  need  or  by  conversion  those 
people  were  accepting  the  principles  of  the  Russian^  revo- 
lution. All  this  was  new,  this  idea  of  self-determination ; 
it  was  a  fresh  idea  to  him,  old  Liberal  Unionist,  who 
believed  in  order  and  authority.  Never  before  had  it 
struck  him  that  a  people  should  have  the  right  to  decide 
their  own  form  of  government.  They  were  born  with 
their  government,  it  had  seemed  to  him,  as  a  man  is 
born  with  a  certain  kind  of  nose.  But  the  idea  of  liberty 
was  invading  him,  inflaming  him,  as  it  always  does  Eng- 
lishmen when  it  does  not  interfere  with  their  interests. 
He  brooded  for  some  time  over  self-determination. 
Hanging  over  a  stile,  he  realised  that  it  might  lead  people 
to  unexpected  conclusions.  Alsace-Lorraine,  for  instance. 
Supposing  they  voted?  They'd  vote  German.  Ten  to 
one  they  would  vote  German.  They  had  been  German 
for  forty-seven  years;  the  papers  said  that  the  whole 
thing  had  been  gerrymandered,  that  the  French  had  left 
the  country,  that  Germans  had  been  settled  instead.  Very 
likely!  the  Germans  thought  no  trick  too  low;  but  still 
there  was  the  fact;  the  people  who  lived  there  would 
probably  vote  German.  One  couldn't  give  votes  to 
people  who  left  the  country  forty-seven  years  before,  to 
people  who  were  dead.  He  smiled.  How  angry  this 
would  make  a  French  politician !  Sir  Hugh  supposed  that 
the  French  idea  was  self-determination  for  everybody 


284  BLIND  ALLEY 

except  Alsace-Lorraine,  this  being  a  historical  wrong; 
and  our  view  self-determination  for  everybody  except 
Ireland,  India,  and  Egypt,  these  being  historical  rights. 
And  the  Italians  believed  in  self-determination  for  Po- 
land, but  not  for  the  Adriatic  coast;  and  the  Germans 
believed  in  self-determination,  provided  everybody  voted 
for  them.  Contempt  surged  up  in  him  as  suddenly  he 
realised  mankind,  incapable  of  desiring  justice  that  is 
cold,  anxious  only  to  seize,  and  conquer,  and  crush. 

Coming  across  the  marsh  he  saw  a  man  whom  he 
thought  he  knew.  He  wondered  what  he  thought  of  self- 
determination.  No  doubt  he,  too,  wanted  to  bag  half 
the  world.  The  man  drew  nearer,  came  towards  him. 
Then  Sir  Hugh  felt  awkward.  It  was  Cradoc.  The 
grocer,  too,  hesitated,  but  the  footpath  inevitably  took 
him  to  the  stile,  and  there  were  dykes  on  the  right  and 
left.  He  did  not  want  to  speak  to  Sir  Hugh.  He  did 
not  want  to  speak  to  anybody,  for  he  felt  outcast.  His 
shop  was  still  half  boycotted,  and  he  would  have  done  no 
trade  at  all  if  Lady  Oakley  had  been  able  to  obtain  from 
Mrs.  Martin  a  more  regular  service  from  Rye.  But,  as 
he  drew  nearer,  Sir  Hugh  smiled  at  him.  After  all, 
Cradoc  lived  on  the  estate,  and  he  remembered  the  quiet, 
earnest  little  figure  who  had  stood  before  him  at  the 
Tribunal;  he  respected  him,  somehow. 

"  Well,"  he  said,  "  how  are  things?  " 

"  Oh !  all  right,"  said  Cradoc.  He  respected  Sir  Hugh. 
He  remembered  him  as  the  fairest  member  of  the  Tri- 
bunal. Only  he  had  nothing  to  say  to  him.  He  felt  a 
class  bar. 

There  was  silence  for  a  moment.  The  real  difficulty 
was  not  mental  but  physical:  if  Cradoc  wanted  to  go  on 
he  would  have  to  climb  the  stile,  causing  Sir  Hugh  to  get 
out  of  his  way ;  he  did  not  want  to  suggest  that  the  Squire 


AMONG  THE  YAHOOS  285 

should  get  out  of  his  way.  Sir  Hugh,  on  the  other  hand, 
felt  that  if  he  stood  back  he  would  be  giving  a  hint  to 
Cradoc  that  he  wanted  to  get  rid  of  him,  and  he  did  not 
want  to  do  that.  So  they  stood  awkwardly  where  they 
were,  wondering  what  to  do.  This  compelled  conversa- 
tion, and  Sir  Hugh  was  so  anxious  to  say  something  tact- 
ful, that  he  blurted  into  the  personal: 

"  I  suppose  you've  had  rather  a  rough  time?  " 

"  Oh,  no,"  said  Cradoc.  "  Just  the  ordinary  time  one 
has  in  prison.  Everybody  was  kind  in  their  way;  the 
chaplain  brought  me  books,  any  books  I  liked.  The  doc- 
tor used  to  talk  to  me,  and  when  I  had  to  see  the  gov- 
ernor once,  he  behaved  like  a  father.  That's  the  horrible 
part  of  it.  They  all  mean  well,  only  they've  got  to  do 
their  duty  to  the  system.  Everybody  meaning  well- 
and  they've  got  to  feed  you  through  the  nose  with  a  tube. 
It's  like  the  war:  everybody  means  well,  and  does  evil." 

"  Oh,  I  say,"  replied  Sir  Hugh,  "  surely  you  don't  think 
the  Germans  mean  well?  " 

"  In  their  way,  yes.  Just  as  we  do.  They're  much  the 
same  sort  of  person,  led  by  much  the  same  sort  of  person. 
Poor  brutes,  most  of  them,  workmen,  peasants,  hauled  out 
to  be  shot  like  our  workmen  and  our  peasants,  led  by 
the  junker  Crown  Prince  and  the  junker  Reventlow,  just 
as  our  poor  boys  are  led  by  junker  Carson,  junker  Lloyd 
George,  and  junker  Archbishop  of  Canterbury." 

Sir  Hugh  thought  for  a  moment.  He  saw  the  point. 
But  he  thought  some  men  were  junker  and  others  more 
junker.  "  Well,"  he  said,  "  I  see  what  you  mean,  only 
aren't  some  of  the  junkers  in  the  right,  and  some  in  the 
wrong?  I  don't  like  war  any  more  than  you  do,  but 
some  wars  have  to  be,  and  so  the  people  who  lead  them, 
in  fact  the  people  who  provoke  them,  are  doing  what 
they  must,  not  what  they  like." 


286  BLIND   ALLEY 

Cradoc  smiled.  "  That's  what  they  all  say.  There 
never  was  a  war  where  everybody  didn't  fight  on  the 
defensive.  We  say  that  we  declared  war  because  Ger- 
many declared  war  on  Belgium,  France  and  Russia ;  Ger- 
many says  she  declared  war  because  they  were  going  to 
do  it  to  her;  Germany  says  that  she  had  to  defend  herself 
against  encirclement,  which  had  been  going  on  for  years ; 
and  we  say  that  we  made  the  Entente  Cordiale  and  the 
Russian  Agreement  to  prevent  Germany  from  attacking 
us.  We're  all  pacifists,  and  we  throw  declarations  of 
war  about  like  confetti;  we  all  want  to  get  on  with  our 
business,  and  we  stop  to  indulge  in  war  work;  we  all 
respect  human  life,  and  we  prove  it  by  killing  twenty 
million  people." 

Sir  Hugh  remained  thoughtful  for  some  time.  His 
intellect  told  him  that  the  man  was  right.  His  emotions 
tried  to  tell  him  that  Cradoc  was  wrong.  He  grew  irri- 
table. "  But,  hang  it  all !  you  wouldn't  have  had  us 
stand  out  when  Belgium  was  invaded?  When  we  were 
pledged  by  treaty  to  defend  that  gallant  little  country?  " 

"  Supposing  we  had?  " 

"  Then  it  would  have  been  our  turn  next." 

"  Oh!  Then  that  was  the  reason?  It  wasn't  to  protect 
little  Belgium?  " 

"  It's  no  good  chopping  logic.     The  things  go  together." 

"  Well,  supposing  we  had  been  invaded?  "  said  Cradoc. 

"  You'd  have  been  the  first  to  dislike  it,  Mr.  Cradoc, 
when  the  Germans  came  into  Sussex,  burning  and  killing 
and  .  .  .'; 

"  Would  all  that  have  happened  if  we  did  not  resist?  " 

"  Not  resist?  But  —  really  this  is  preposterous.  If 
we  didn't  resist  we  should  have  been  annexed." 

"  Excellent,"  said  Cradoc.  "  Why  not  be  annexed? 
Don't  you  think  it  would  be  a  good  thing  if  Serbia  could 


AMONG  THE   YAHOOS  287 

annex  the  rest  of  the  Balkans  and  make  an  end  of  these 
little  wars?  " 

"  It  might,"  said  Sir  Hugh,  and  realised  too  late  that 
he  had  walked  into  a  trap. 

"  Then,"  said  Cradoc,  "  if  Germany  were  allowed  to 
annex  the  British  Empire  that  would  make  an  end  of  one 
set  of  wars." 

.  Sir  Hugh  grew  rather  angry.  He  did  not  like  being 
put  into  a  corner.  He  remembered  that  he  was  arguing 
with  a  grocer,  and  in  his  petulance  this  seemed  material. 
Fortunately,  he  was  too  well  bred  to  use  the  fact.  In- 
stead, he  made  snappy  reference  to  our  culture  and  the 
bestiality  of  German  life  and  methods. 

"Well,  let's  put  it  differently,"  said  Cradoc.  "Sup- 
posing we  could  annex  Germany?  We'd  give  her  good 
government,  that  is,  according  to  most  people." 

"  Oh,"  said  Sir  Hugh,  "  it's  all  very  well  talking,  but 
we're  not  willing  to  be  annexed  and  German's  not  willing ; 
so  it's  Utopia." 

"  It's  temporary  Utopia.  When  I  say  annex  I'm  just 
exaggerating  my  point.  I  mean  federate  rather  than 
annex." 

"  We  can't  federate  with  Germany." 

"  We  used  to  say  that  we  couldn't  federate  with  Scot- 
land and  Wales,  and  we  did.  I  think  all  the  world  could 
federate,  and  will  federate,  by  degrees,  as  we  get  rid  of 
the  people  who  want  to  stop  federation,  because  they  have 
power  in  their  own  States,  and  would  have  less  in  the 
world  State;  people  like  kings,  diplomatists,  generals, 
noblemen,  politicians,  financiers.  The  real  people  of  the 
world,  the  working  masses,  they  could  federate  all  right. 
There's  no  hostility  between  a  German  coal  miner  and 
an  English  tinsmith.  The  trade  unions  of  the  world  all 
want  members,  of  any  race  or  creed,  so  that  they  may 


288  BLIND   ALLEY 

work  for  the  good  of  the  world  instead  of  the  good  of  the 
nation.  There's  no  hostility  between  men  who  work, 
because  they  work  together;  there  is  only  hostility  be- 
tween men  who  prey,  because  they  prey  on  each  other.  I 
say  '  Down  with  the  kings !  down  with  the  capitalists ! 
down  with  the  landlords ! '  and  then  there'll  be  no  obsta- 
cles to  peace." 

They  did  not  speak  for  some  time.  Sir  Hugh  felt  that 
Cradoc  was  setting  forth  an  idealistic  case  and  doing  it 
badly,  but  the  earnestness  of  the  pale  face  interested 
him.  Yes,  obviously  the  war  was  largely  a  clash  of  ambi- 
tions. Had  he  not  said  it  himself  at  the  club  the  other 
day?  Had  he  not  realised  England,  like  Germany,  grab- 
bing at  colonies,  talking  of  tariffs  to  bar  out  people  from 
her  markets,  shouting  that  the  foreigner  must  be  kept 
out,  and  crowing  in  its  press  that  its  own  was  the  finest 
dunghill.  He  understood  the  idea,  and  suddenly  agreed 
with  it,  but  he  was  a  practical  man.  "  It's  all  very  well. 
I  don't  say  you're  wrong.  But  how's  it  going  to  be 
done?  " 

"  The  people  must  resume  power  in  all  the  big  coun- 
tries. They  must  first  get  on  an  even  political  basis,  that 
is  to  say,  establish  republics.  They  will  be  bourgeois 
republics  at  first.  Then  the  labour  parties  of  the  world 
will  more  and  more  control  the  parliaments.  As  this 
happens  the  capitalist  will  lose  power.  As  he  loses  power 
the  cry  for  new  markets  will  become  less,  for  the  labour  of 
the  world  does  not  want  new  markets ;  it  wants  to  produce 
goods  for  its  own  use,  and  not  goods  on  which  to  accumu- 
late profits.  When  there  is  no  demand  for  new  markets 
there  will  be  no  need  for  colonial  wars  to  open  these  new 
markets.  Then  nation  will  want  to  trade  with  nation, 
because  some  nations  make  one  thing  better  than  another, 
make  it  at  the  price  of  less  effort.  You'll  find  English- 


AMONG  THE  YAHOOS  289 

men  working  iron,  while  France  grows  crops,  and  Ger- 
many makes  chemicals.  Thus,  by  degrees,  each  nation 
will  stick  to  its  national  business  and  keep  its  nose  out  of 
other  nations'  business.  Those  commercial  links  will 
make  it  necessary  for  the  parliaments  to  make  agree- 
ments. The  agreements  will  be  complicated,  and  so  there 
will  be  occasional  parliamentary  missions  from  one  coun- 
try to  another,  to  establish  necessary  things  like  common 
railway  systems,  common  telegraphs,  air  service;  later, 
common  rationing,  until  they  come  to  common  production. 
As  national  business  grows  larger  the  parliaments  will 
find  it  necessary  to  hold  occasional  joint  sittings.  Then 
they  will  come  always  to  sit  jointly,  and  you'll  have  the 
parliament  of  man." 

Sir  Hugh  stared  at  him.  It  amazed  him  that  the  little 
tradesman  should  have  thought  all  this  out.  It  seemed 
so  moderate,  too,  so  possible  if  only  we  cleared  away  the 
people  who  lived  by  crowns,  contracts,  diplomatic  min- 
utes, cocked  hats,  flags,  epaulets,  orders,  aiguillettes,  all 
the  kickshaws  and  gimcracks  for  which  men  die. 

"  But,"  he  cried,  "  it's  revolution!  " 

Cradoc  shrugged  his  shoulders.  "  I  don't  know.  Evo- 
lution if  we  can.  Revolution  if  we  must." 

"  Mr.  Cradoc,"  said  Sir  Hugh,  at  last,  "  I've  never 
thought  of  things  in  this  way,  and  perhaps  I'll  come  to 
agree  with  you.  Only  you're  putting  all  the  guilt  on  the 
kings,  and  generals,  and  the  capitalists.  What  about  the 
people  themselves?  Are  you  quite  sure  that  they,  too, 
are  not  drunk  with  this  desire  to  carry  their  flag  to  the 
end  of  the  earth?  That  these  workpeople  are  not  as  full 
of  hate  and  ambition  as  their  masters?  That  they,  too, 
don't  want  money  and  power?  " 

"  Some  do.  Many  have  been  soiled  by  the  old  tradi- 
tion of  the  rivalry  of  princes  and  the  loyalty  due  to  them, 


290  BLIND   ALLEY 

and  they  are  run  by  a  press  which  every  day  incites  them 
to  hate  and  to  grab,  and  makes  them  believe  that  they  are 
better  off  when  they  have  grabbed,  in  fact  when  all  they 
have  got  is  more  taxes.  But  most  people  are  not  like 
that." 

"  Events  contradict  you.  What  about  the  seamen  who 
have  just  stopped  Mr.  Henderson  going  to  Stockholm? 
They  don't  seem  keen  on  the  international." 

"  No.  They  have  suffered  loss  of  many  comrades  sunk 
by  Germans  in  ships  —  and  they  do  not  yet  understand 
that  murder  only  makes  murder;  their  animal  pugnacity 
is  still  at  the  disposal  of  the  people  who  can  profit  by  it. 
But  they  will  learn  that  only  love  and  justice  can  breed 
love  and  justice.  There  is  no  stud  where  the  dogs  of  war 
give  birth  to  the  dove  of  peace." 

"  Learn,"  said  Sir  Hugh.  "  In  other  words  we  must 
teach  them." 

Then,  suddenly,  he  stood  back  and  Cradoc  climbed  the 
stile.  Sir  Hugh  had  been  frightened  by  this  "  we  "  which 
had  sprung  from  his  lips.  After  Cradoc  had  vanished 
round  the  green,  Sir  Hugh  remained  for  a  long  time  at 
the  stile.  His  mind  was  in  ferment.  He  did  not  know 
what  he  believed  yet,  but  one  phrase  clung:  "  Evolution 
if  we  can,  revolution  if  we  must." 

XXIV 

MONICA  was  waiting  in  her  sitting  room  at  Castle 
Hill.  Feeling  that  action  would  maintain  her  coolness 
she  was  sewing,  and  as  her  fingers  moved,  tried  to  give 
shape  to  her  situation.  But  other  things  intruded. 
Though  Cottenham  was  to  come  to  her  that  night  for  the 
first  time,  she  found  herself  generalising ;  the  evening  post 
had  brought  her  a  letter  from  Miss  Moss,  in  which  the 


AMONG  THE  YAHOOS  291 

girl  asked  for  a  job  in  the  Cottenham  Works.  Quite 
simply  Miss  Moss  told  her  why :  "  Since  Jimmy  Quin  was 
killed  I've  felt  that  I  couldn't  stay  here  any  more,  only 
thinking.  I  must  do  something.  I  know  you'll  laugh  at 
me,  for  I  only  met  him  one  week-end,  but  there  it  is,  I 
can't  help  it  if  you  laugh  at  me." 

Monica  did  not  laugh.  She  sighed  as  she  remembered 
the  dark  flushed  loveliness  of  the  girl,  and  Quin's  mis- 
chief. Killed!  One  couldn't  understand  anything  so 
alive  being  dead.  She  remembered  the  thorny  crown 
which  they  hung  upon  an  oak;  a  scrap  of  Quin's  Eliza- 
bethan lyric  came  back  to  her: 

Blight  upon  the  roses,  blight  in  May. 

(Merrily,  merrily) , 
Mother  and  daughter  of  my  own  decay, 

(Drearily,  drearily)    .    .    . 

Monica  found  her  eyes  full  of  tears.  Must  the  war  spoil 
them  all?  Sylvia,  and  Miss  Moss,  and  young  Quin? 
Sylvia  who  had  lost  one  husband  and  seemed  unhappy 
with  the  second?  She,  herself,  loving  and  not  loving, 
loved  and  not  loved.  As  she  sat  sewing  she  thought 
more  and  more  of  herself  and  of  the  fortnight  just  elapsed. 
There  had  been  in  those  days  exquisite  moments,  for  he 
had  been  with  her  for  more  than  three-quarters  of  an 
hour;  they  had  passed  whole  evenings  in  the  shanty  in 
Bull's  Field,  talking,  making  love,  making  plans;  they 
had  walked  in  the  country  in  the  clear  moonlight  and 
through  light  showers.  There  had  been  many  times  of 
doubt,  almost  of  bitterness ;  she  was  tired  of  never  hearing 
him  say:  "  I  love  you  ";  he  was  ashamed  of  wanting  her 
so  much,  loving  her  so  little.  This  tinged  their  relation 
with  cruelty.  But  what  hurt  her  most  was  that  such  de- 
lights as  she  attained  were  due  to  Julia's  absence.  She 


292  BLIND  ALLEY 

thought:  "  It  was  only  because  his  wife  was  away.  If 
she'd  been  there  he  would  have  been  in  attendance  on  her. 
He'd  have  to  be,  of  course."  But  she  thought,  savagely: 
"  Perhaps  he'd  want  to  be."  For  the  first  time  she 
acknowledged  to  herself  that  she  hated  Julia,  because  she 
possessed  the  man  she  wanted,  not  only  legally  but  by 
the  right  of  conquering  charm.  "  He's  been  with  me  these 
nights,  not  because  I'd  broken  into  their  marriage,  but 
because  she  couldn't  watch  him.  He  was  not  escaping 
from  her  to  me,  he  was  escaping  from  nothing  —  to  noth- 
ing." 

It  was  such  thoughts  had  induced  her  to  receive  him  at 
Castle  Hill.  It  was  dangerous,  not  only  because  he  might 
be  seen,  but  because  they  might  find  themselves  irre- 
trievably linked  without  being  entirely  joined.  But  she 
felt  the  need  for  complete  explanations,  for  an  acid  test. 
Through  the  last  weeks  he  had  demanded  too  much  of 
her,  too  much  emotional  abjection,  too  many  surrenders. 
Yet  she  knew  that  she  was  entirely  his,  and  so  she  did  not 
resent  this:  What  she  did  resent  was  that  never  had  he 
taken  all  she  would  give,  that  he  had  tortured  her  into 
acquiescence,  yet  always  held  back,  held  himself  in  con- 
trol, as  if  he  were  afraid  of  becoming  responsible  for  her. 
He  had  said  so  once:  "  I  daren't  become  the  centre  of 
your  life.  I'm  afraid  of  not  making  you  as  happy  as  I 
want  you  to  be.  Yes,  I  know,  the  thing  we  love  wants  to 
be  killed,  but  its  predestined  murderer  may  shrink  from 
the  necessary  crime." 

She  started.  Outside  she  could  hear  the  signal,  for  he 
did  not  want  to  ring  and  be  seen  by  the  landlady.  She 
listened  while  he  whistled  two  bars  of  Alceste.  "  Now," 
thought  Monica,  "  now's  my  chance.  Let  him  whistle, 
and  don't  go."  But  she  knew  that  she  would  go,  and  still 
telling  herself  to  keep  her  door  shut  she  opened  it. 


AMONG  THE  YAHOOS  293 

Cottenham  came  in,  half  elated,  half  nervous.  He  was 
sensitive  enough  to  feel  finality  in  this  interview.  "  To- 
night," he  thought,  "  it's  all  or  nothing,  and  whichever  it 
is  I'll  regret  it."  So,  as  much  to  cheat  himself  as  to  put 
off  the  irreparable,  he  seized  her  in  his  arms  and  for  a 
moment  caressed  her  so  that  he  did  not  realise  she  re- 
sisted him.  Only  after  a  moment  did  Monica  put  him 
away: 

"  No,  Frank,  don't  come  near  me  for  a  moment.  Sit 
down.  Let  us  talk." 

He  sat  down.  His  mind  wandered  to  the  ugliness  of 
the  room.  "  What  a  hideous  sideboard !  and  what  a 
cruet!" 

"  Frank,"  said  Monica,  "  what  d'you  want  to  do?  " 

"  How  do  you  mean?    What  do  I  want  to  do?  " 

"  Well,  yes;  here  we  are,  we  two.  Can  we  go  on  like 
this?  " 

He  feinted:  "  What  have  I  done?  What  have  you  got 
against  me?  " 

"  I've  got  nothing  against  you  that  I  haven't  got  against 
myself.  It's  not  that.  But  how  are  things  going  to 
end?  " 

He  did  not  reply.  He  did  not  know  how  things  were 
going  to  end.  Or  rather  he  felt  they  could  not  end  at  all, 
and  he  dared  not  tell  her  so. 

"  Tell  me,"  said  the  girl,  "  are  you  sick  of  me?  " 

Cottenham  gave  a  little  cry  of  protest,  seized  her,  cov- 
ered with  kisses  lips  that  did  not  resist,  but  trembled.  For 
a  long  time  he  held  her  so,  and  all  the  old  allure  rose  up 
and  overwhelmed  him;  she  was  glad  of  his  embrace,  re- 
sponsive to  his  contact.  She  could  not  think;  she  could 
only  feel  the  delight  of  drawing  him  closer,  of  holding 
him,  of  finding  an  assurance  which  did  not  feel  false.  But 
still,  after  a  moment  the  question  in  her  mind  set  itself 


294  BLIND  ALLEY 

once  more.  She  must  know,  she  must  know.  Her  head 
upon  his  shoulder,  she  said: 

"  You  don't  love  me." 

He  did  not  reply*  There  was  enough  nobility  in  him 
to  stop  a  lie.  Indeed  he  instinctively  made  for  sincerity, 
though  he  wrapped  it  up  in  phrases. 

"  Love,"  he  said,  "  what  is  love?  Who  shall  say 
whether  we  are  so  different  from  the  beasts?  Whether 
love  is  not  merely  the  cry  of  the  life  force?  Why  should 
we  assume  that  love  means  everlasting  attraction?  That 
it  means  marriage,  children,  bills?  Must  one  love  be- 
cause of  the  curve  of  a  lip?  Must  one  love  because  one 
has  made  a  fetish  of  an  invisible  soul?  Oh!  Monica,  it 
would  be  so  much  easier  to  lie  to  you." 

"  It  wouldn't;  you're  not  that  sort  of  man." 

"  No.  I  suppose  not.  Yet  I'm  not  a  nice  man.  I  may 
be  an  attractive  man,  but  I'm  not  a  nice  man.  Not  loyal, 
faithful,  truthful,  decent,  kind.  I'm  nothing  of  the  sort. 
I'm  not  a  satisfaction;  I'm  a  pleasure." 

"  You  don't  love  me,"  said  Monica  again. 

"  Well,  I've  never  pretended  to.  I  want  you.  You 
play  a  part  in  my  life  that  I  couldn't  cut  out.  Oh!  I 
suppose  I  could,  just  as  you  could.  It  would  hurt,  that's 
all.  But  I've  never  pretended.  I've  always  wanted  to 
make  you  happy,  as  much  as  I  could.  And  I've  done  you 
no  harm  really ;  I've  done  you  good.  When  you  first  met 
me  you  weren't  alive,  you  weren't  awake,  you  weren't 
capable  of  loving;  now  your  eyes  are  open,  you  can  let 
your  emotions  go.  I've  made  the  world  vivid  to  you." 

"  And  what  is  the  good  of  all  that  to  me?  "  said  Mon- 
ica. 

"  I  don't  know,  but  I  do  know  it's  some  good,  instead  of 
doddering  along  to  old  maidenhood  or  to  dull  mar- 
riage. I've  taught  you  to  feel.  All  through  your  life 


AMONG  THE  YAHOOS  295 

you'll  understand  emotion;  you'll  have  sympathy;  you 
won't  get  old.  Getting  old  is  getting  hard,  and  you'll 
never  get  hard." 

Monica  did  not  reply  for  a  time.  Then  she  said: 
"  Frank,  do  you  understand  that  you're  saying  '  good- 
bye '  to  me?  " 

He  remained  staring  at  the  floor,  then  said: 

"  I  don't  want  to ;  you  don't  want  to.  Yet  I  suppose 
we're  saying  good-bye.  Things  were  against  us."  He 
turned  to  go,  averting  his  eyes,  and  as  he  turned  there 
rose  up  in  Monica  a  desolation.  She  realised  herself  as 
marooned  upon  an  island.  She  cried  out: 

"Frank!  Frank!  don't  go.  I  can't  let  you  go."  He 
paused,  irresolute  upon  the  threshold;  Monica  ran  up  to 
him,  clutching  him  by  the  arm: 

"  Don't  go !  don't  leave  me.  I  can't  let  you  go.  I 
thought  I  could  and  I  can't.  You  mean  too  much  to  me. 
You've  cut  out  everything  except  yourself.  You  can't 
leave  me  like  this.  I'm  ashamed  of  it,  and  you're  all 
I've  got  —  oh!  don't,  oh!  don't."  She  threw  both  arms 
round  him.  "  I  don't  ask  for  anything.  I  don't  ask  you 
to  be  responsible  for  anything.  You  needn't  be  decent 
to  me  if  you  don't  want  to."  Her  voice  thickened  with 
tears.  "  Only  don't  send  me  away.  You've  conquered 
me  and  you  can't  give  me  up." 

Then  her  tears  grew  so  heavy  that  she  could  speak  no 
more.  It  was  only  a  minute  or  two  later  that  she  realised 
the  stiffness  of  the  shape  she  held.  He  did  not  free  him- 
self, he  did  not  hold  her  to  him.  He  was  passive  in  her 
arms,  submissive,  and  she  vaguely  realised  that  as  she 
inverted  the  attitude  of  woman,  as  she  pleaded  instead 
of  eluding,  she  wearied  him,  she  humiliated  him,  dis- 
gusted him.  So  horrible  was  this  feeling  that  she  did  not 
resist  when  he  loosened  her  hands,  made  her  sit  down  and 


296  BLIND   ALLEY 

dried  her  tears.  He  stood  a  little  away  from  her,  and 
while  he  spoke  she  hardly  understood  him.  She  stared 
at  him  with  swollen  eyes. 

"  It's  no  good,  Monica,"  he  said,  roughly.  "  You're 
right.  It  can't  go  on  and  it  can't  end.  So  it  must  end. 
It's  better  for  both  of  us.  It  would  have  been  too  beauti- 
ful." 

He  was  gone.  Monica  sat  silent  and  motionless,  her 
eyes  fixed  upon  the  closed  door.  It  had  closed  upon  the 
past  and  upon  life.  She  thought  of  him  without  anger 
and  without  misery.  She  understood  him  better.  He 
had  wanted  her  lightly,  to  be  content  with  a  little,  and  so 
they  had  walked  into  a  blind  alley.  She  was  prepared  to 
give  too  much.  He  had  aroused  more  than  he  wanted. 
Was  it  fair  to  thrust  that  upon  him?  Then  she  could 
think  no  more.  She  was  conscious  only  of  her  loneliness, 
her  misery.  It  could  not  be.  Later  only  in  the  night 
did  the  tears  come  again,  tears  on  the  stream  of  which 
flowed  away  energy  and  resentment.  For  two  nights  she 
could  not  sleep.  Her  food  sickened  her.  When  she  went 
to  unit  office  to  give  in  her  notice  on  the  score  of  ill-health, 
the  foreman  said: 

"  I'm  not  surprised.    You  look  pretty  wonky." 

XXV 

SIR  HUGH  walked  up  and  down  the  big  drawing-room. 
Hands  in  pockets,  head  sunken  upon  shirt  front,  he  was 
thinking  of  his  interview  with  the  grocer.  It  still  struck 
him  as  queer  that  he  should  have  talked  to  the  grocer. 
His  tradition  made  it  normal  for  him  to  discuss  local  af- 
fairs with  the  farmers,  and  to  pass  the  time  of  day  with 
the  labourers.  If  he  had  talked  to  Hart  or  to  Port  it 
would  have  been  all  right,  but  somehow  the  Oakleys  didn't 


AMONG  THE   YAHOOS  297 

talk  to  tradesmen.  "  Times  are  changing,"  he  thought 
with  a  smile,  "  if  the  Oakleys  are  changing."  His  mind 
turned  to  the  stormy  happenings  of  the  day,  the  formi- 
dable fighting  around  Arras,  in  Italy,  the  rout  of  the  Rus- 
sians, the  fall  of  Riga,  the  epic  of  Kerensky,  trying  to 
rally  forces  sick  of  war,  streaming  homewards  along  the 
roads,  across  country,  shedding  their  equipments,  their 
arms,  even  their  supplies,  panic-stricken,  mutinous,  stop- 
ping to  hold  excited  meetings  which  broke  into  flight  as 
the  German  batteries  advanced  and  sprayed  them  with 
shrapnel.  Epic,  yes,  this  attempt  of  a  little  sick  man  to 
hold  together  the  great  Russian  ice  floe  that  was  melting 
and  cracking  under  the  hot  blast  of  new  ideas.  "  Ideas!  " 
reflected  Sir  Hugh.  "  Pobiedonostzeff  was  right;  an  idea 
is  more  powerful  than  dynamite.  It  has  power  even  over 
me,  as  if  a  man  could  govern  anything  except  his  own 
thoughts.  Power  over  me,  a  landlord  and  a  capitalist." 
He  smiled.  "  Am  I  as  bad  as  all  that?  "  he  wondered. 
"  Yes,  I  suppose  there's  no  denying  it ;  I  don't  do  any 
real  work;  I've  inherited  land,  and  I  sit  upon  it  while 
other  people  till  it,  and  I  take  most  of  the  proceeds.  My 
labourers  do  their  own  washing,  eat  coarse  food,  bring  up 
half  a  dozen  children  on  a  pound  a  week,  live  in  houses 
with  stone  floors,  under  roofs  which  are  none  too  good, 
drink  water  from  a  well  that's  none  too  clean,  and  go  on 
until  they're  crippled  with  rheumatism  and  find  their  last 
home  in  the  workhouse,  unless  I'm  good  enough  to  give 
them  a  pension  of  ten  shillings  a  week,  while  Lena  goes 
round  graciously  handing  out  tea  to  the  old  women,  and 
bed  socks  to  the  old  men.  Meanwhile  I  stay  in  this  large 
house  with  plenty  of  clean  linen,  hot  water  when  I  want 
it,  large  meals  if  I'm  hungry,  delicate  ones  if  I'm  sick,  and 
the  right  to  do  what  I  like,  not  to  touch  my  cap  and  say 
'  sir  '  to  any  man.  And  when  I'm  old  they'll  take  me  to 


298  BLIND  ALLEY 

a  foreign  spa  to  put  me  right,  so  that  I  may  go  on  eating 
the  meals  I  like,  and  giving  orders  to  the  people  who 
haven't  got  land,  the  people  whom  I'm  blackmailing  into 
giving  me  most  of  their  earnings,  by  holding  on  to  the  land 
which  they  work  and  on  which  I  prey,  blackmailing  by 
telling  them  to  work  on  my  land  or  go  and  starve." 

For  a  moment  Sir  Hugh  hated  himself.    Then  he  had 
a  revulsion.    "After  all,  it's  the  survival  of  the  fittest. 
I  hold  this  land  because  they're  too  weak  or  too  stupid 
to  take  it  from  me.    If  they're  like  that,  what  right  have 
they  to  it?    But  no,  that  won't  do;  no  wonder  they're 
weak  and  stupid  when  for  generations  my  class  has  hung 
on  to  all  the  things  which  give  men  power:  education, 
decent  houses,  and,  above  all,  security  and  leisure  which 
give  men  a  chance  to  think  and  plan.    I've  stolen  their 
souls  as  well  as  stolen  their  land.    No,  not  stolen;  I 
haven't  the  pluck  for  that.    Some  old  Oakley  had  the 
spirit  of  a  brigand,  so  he  took  it.    He  was  a  worthy  man, 
but  I,  his  heir,  haven't  his  backbone.    I  live  upon  the  pro- 
ceeds of  those  thefts.     I  am  a  receiver  of  stolen  goods." 
"  Hugh,"  said  Lady  Oakley,  "  for  heaven's  sake  don't 
walk  up  and  down;  you  get  on  my  nerves." 
"  Sorry,  old  girl,  I'm  feeling  rather  restless." 
"  I'm  not  surprised  with  things  in  the  state  they  are. 
Still,  sit  down  and  do  something." 
Sir  Hugh  did  not  reply  for  a  moment,  then  said: 
"  I  met  Cradoc  to-day.    He's  got  odd  ideas." 
"  Odd  ideas?  "  said  Lady  Oakley.    "  Do  you  mean  to 
say  you  spoke  to  him?  " 

"  I  had  to,  in  a  way.  We  both  reached  a  stile  at  the 
same  time.  Still  I  don't  see  why  I  shouldn't  speak  to 
him." 

"  Nonsense.  You  know  perfectly  well  that  one  can't 
have  anything  to  do  with  a  man  like  that." 


AMONG  THE   YAHOOS  299 

"  Oh!  he's  not  infectious."  But  as  he  spoke  Sir  Hugh 
wondered  whether  Cradoc  was  not. 

"  Don't  be  silly.  You  know  quite  well  that  if  we  seem 
to  condone  his  conduct,  everybody  will.  We've  got  to 
give  the  example  in  the  village.  That  man  must  not  be 
allowed  to  forget  that  he  refused  to  serve  his  country  be- 
cause he's  a  coward  and  shelters  himself  behind  a  law 
made  by  the  weak-kneed  for  the  weak-kneed.  He  ought 
to  be  shot.  I'd  like  to  know  how  many  conscientious  ob- 
jectors there'd  be  if  they  were  shot  instead  of  tucked 
up  in  a  comfortable  jail  while  other  people  fight  for 
them." 

"  Lena,  I  think  you're  exaggerating." 

"Ami?    How?" 

"  You  seem  to  think  there's  no  such  thing  as  conscience. 
Oh!  yes,  yes,  I  know,"  he  went  on  impatiently,  as  Lady 
Oakley  opened  her  mouth  to  reply,  "  you'll  say  that  no 
man's  conscience  could  bid  him  keep  out  of  the  war,  but  I 
tell  you  that  a  man's  conscience  may  bid  him  anything. 
You  mayn't  like  it,  but  there  it  is,  and  if  he's  honest ..." 

"Honest!" 

"  Yes,  honest ;  if  he's  honest  we  must  either  respect  his 
conscience  or  we  must  adopt  the  brutal  disregard  of  fine 
feeling  which  people  say  we're  fighting  against  when  we 
fight  the  Germans.  I'm  not  so  sure  that  these  conscien- 
tious objectors  are  as  black  as  they  are  painted.  It's 
not  so  nice  as  all  that  going  to  prison  when  one  might 
squirm  out  of  it  by  making  munitions  or  going  on  the 
land.  Do  you  know  that  over  three  hundred  people,  men 
and  women,  have  just  handed  in  a  petition  to  be  allowed 
to  take  the  place  of  conscientious  objectors  in  gaol  —  like 
the  hundred  and  sixty- four  Quakers  who  offered  them- 
selves in  1659  as  substitutes  for  political  prisoners.  I 
think  it's  beautiful." 


300  BLIND  ALLEY 

"  Hugh !  "  cried  Lady  Oakley,  "  one  might  think  you 
agreed  with  them." 

"  I  don't  and  I  do.  I'm  not  so  sure  as  I  was  that  this 
war  is  a  struggle  between  democracy  in  England  and 
autocracy  in  Germany.  I'm  not  so  sure  that  the  real 
struggle  is  not  between  the  German  junker  and  capitalist 
on  one  side,  and  the  empire  builder  on  this  side.  It  may 
be  that  there  wouldn't  have  been  a  war  if  we  hadn't 
grabbed  half  the  world  and  claimed  the  other  half.  I'm 
no  friend  of  German  imperialism,  but  I'm  not  so  sure  as 
I  was  of  British  imperialism.  This  desire  to  expand,  to 
get  new  markets,  to  build  fantastic  railways,  and  to  hold 
on  to  everything,  and  blackmail  everybody  else  by  means 
of  tariffs  —  it  looks  uncommonly  like  the  origin  of  all 
war." 

"Berlin-Baghdad,"  said  Lady  Oakley. 

"Yes,  Berlin-Baghdad;  there's  a  ridiculous  idea  for 
which  to  go  and  kill  people.  Are  we  any  better?  I  seem 
to  have  heard  of  a  thing  called  Cape  to  Cairo.  Tell  me, 
please,  what  the  difference  is?  Does  it  amount  to  say- 
ing that  a  scheme  is  clean  if  we  run  it,  and  unclean  if 
others  run  it?  " 

"  How  can  you  talk  such  nonsense?  Everybody  knows 
that  the  German  in  his  colonies  behaves  like  a  wild  beast, 
that  the  natives  hate  him,  that  it's  our  duty  to  bring  good 
government  ..." 

"  Lena,  that's  cant.  Natives  hate  all  white  men. 
They  stand  some  sorts  better  than  others.  All  white  men 
sweat  black  men.  Of  course,  the  Germans  in  the  col- 
onies have  murdered,  and  outraged,  and  burned,  but 
didn't  the  Belgians  flog  and  torture  in  the  Congo?  Didn't 
we  wipe  out  the  Matabeles  in  South  Africa?  Didn't  the 
French  wipe  the  natives  out  in  Dahomey?  Haven't  we 
killed  the  Pacific  native  with  gin?  Didn't  we  fight  the 


AMONG  THE  YAHOOS  301 

Chinese  to  force  them  to  buy  opium?  This  talk  of  duty 
makes  me  sick.  This  hypocrisy.  Let  us  talk  of  profits 
for  our  traders  and  soft  jobs  for  our  sons  in  the  Colonial 
Civil  Service,  that's  straight;  but  don't  let's  talk  of  the 
white  man's  burden,  let's  talk  of  the  white  man's  booty. 
They  hate  us;  all  India  and  half  Egypt  only  stick  us 
because  we've  got  the  machine  guns.  Us!  Who  are  we? 
The  ruling  class,  of  course.  What  does  all  this  power, 
this  empire,  mean  to  the  working  class?  " 

"  It's  got  nothing  to  do  with  them,"  said  Lady  Oakley. 
"  They've  got  no  education;  it's  for  us  to  lead  them  and 
to  see  they  do  their  part  in  the  empire.  The  working 
class  is  getting  beyond  itself.  Think  that  in  a  war  like 
this  the  engineers  should  be  striking!  If  we  were  to  shoot 
one  out  of  every  ten  ..." 

"Shoot!  that  seems  to  be  the  only  argument  our  class 
has  got.  Force,  and  more  force,  never  reasoning,  never 
listening  to  the  other  side.  Besides,  it's  all  very  well  this 
talk  of  shooting  working  men,  and  it  may  be  justified,  but 
if  we  start  doing  that  sort  of  thing  we'll  have  to  apply  the 
method  to  everybody." 

"  So  one  should  in  war  time." 

"Oh!  should  one?  I  don't  think  you'd  agree,  Lena, 
when  it  came  to  it.  You  sit  there  talking  of  shooting  the 
strikers,  and  you're  ready  to  breed  suspicion  and  hate  by 
treating  the  employers  in  quite  a  different  way.  I  see 
something  of  that  on  the  Board.  When  we  offer  a  con- 
tractor work  and  he  says  that  the  Government  price  is 
too  low,  and  he  won't  do  it,  do  we  shoot  him?  When  we 
examine  his  costs  and  find  that  the  poor  fellpw  can  only 
make  seven  per  cent,  and  still  he  won't  do  the  work,  do 
we  shoot  him?  When  he's  doing  some  work  for  us,  and 
gives  us  notice  because  he  isn't  making  enough,  in  other 
words,  strikes  —  yes,  strikes  —  strikes  because  he  says 


302  BLIND  ALLEY 

the  profit  doesn't  enable  him  to  live  decently,  just  as 
the  workman  strikes  because  he  says  the  wages  don't  al- 
low him  to  live  decently,  do  we  shoot  the  employer?  No, 
we  stop  his  mouth  with  a  peerage." 

"  Well,  I  didn't  back  him  up,"  said  Lady  Oakley.  "  I 
didn't  say  men  should  make  fortunes  out  of  the  war." 

"  They  are  making  fortunes.  The  country's  rotten  with 
profiteering,  and  we  can't  stop  it.  We  fix  wages,  and  most 
of  the  time  the  workman's  got  to  accept  the  rate  or 
starve;  but  if  we  fix  prices  and  the  profiteer  withholds 
the  goods,  which  is  just  the  same  thing  as  a  workman 
withholding  his  labour,  we  talk  of  calling  up  the  workman 
and  making  him  hand  over  his  labour  under  the  bayonet ; 
we  aren't  so  ready  to  make  the  profiteer  hand  over  the 
goods  which  he  is  blackmailing  the  community  into  buy- 
ing at  a  higher  rate.  And  if  he  does  hand  over  his  goods, 
we  let  him  take  the  higher  price  for  all  the  old  stock  he 
bought  at  low  prices,  for  all  the  stuff  he  bought  before  the 
war.  Profits  are  sacred,  men  are  not." 

Lady  Oakley  did  not  reply  for  some  time.  Then  she 
said,  more  gently: 

"  I  don't  know  what's  come  over  you.  I  wish  you 
weren't  so  excited."  She  went  up  to  him  and  put  her 
hand  on  his  arm.  "  Don't  let's  quarrel  over  things  that 
don't  matter  —  I  mean  to  us,  that's  to  say,  between  us." 

Sir  Hugh  looked  at  his  wife  tenderly,  sorrowfully.  Yes, 
indeed,  he  did  not  know  what  had  come  over  him.  Why 
should  this  handsome,  imperious  woman,  who  had  once 
held  such  sway  over  him,  become  every  day  more  strange? 
Was  it  because  she  could  not  leave  her  class,  while  every 
day  it  seemed  to  be  leaving  him? 


AMONG   THE   YAHOOS  303 

XXVI 

SIR  HUGH  and  Louise  settled  Stephen  into  the  compart- 
ment. Though  his  son  had  almost  recovered  from  shell- 
shock,  excepting  his  sombre  humour,  he  had  only  just 
begun  to  walk  again,  and  would  always  be  lame.  It  hurt 
the  father  to  have  to  assist  this  vigorous  young  man  up 
the  steps  of  the  carriage.  But  it  pleased  him  to  see  Louise 
tend  him,  place  a  pillow  under  his  elbow,  and  skilfully 
raise  the  injured  limb  so  as  to  make  a  sort  of  bolster 
under  the  knee. 

"  There,"  she  said.  "  Now  you'll  be  quite  comfortable. 
It  was  worth  driving  into  Hastings.  You  won't  have  to 
move  till  London,  instead  of  having  to  change  at  Ash- 
ford." 

"  Thanks,  old  thing.  And,  I  say,  you  might  let  out  old 
Toss  when  you  get  back.  I'm  afraid  I  locked  him  up  in 
the  gun  room.  He  went  to  sleep  and  I  forgot  him.  And 
since  you're  in  Hastings,  perhaps  you  wouldn't  mind  drop- 
ping at  the  bookseller's  at  the  back  of  the  Queen's,  and 
asking  him  whether  he's  waiting  for  the  war  to  stop  be- 
fore he  sends  me  that  book  on  foreign  exchanges.  And 
if  anybody  tries  to  sell  you  any  matches,  buy  'em." 

"  Righto,"  said  Louise,  smiling  as  she  closed  the  door. 
All  were  pleased  in  their  way  with  this  dependence.  As 
the  train  pulled  out,  Stephen  seemed  to  be  thinking  of  it. 
"  Dear  old  Louise,"  he  murmured,  "  I'd  have  had  a  thin 
time  of  it  these  six  months  if  it  hadn't  been  for  her." 

"  She's  a  dear  girl,"  said  Sir  Hugh,  and  for  a  moment 
sank  into  a  dream  of  the  dead  Mrs.  Douglas,  who  had  not 
known  how  to  love  him.  He  wished  Douglas  would  die. 
He  didn't  like  him.  Then  he  could  practically  adopt 
Louise.  But  he  remembered  that  Stephen  must  not  be 
allowed  to  brood,  and  talked  of  the  journey  to  London, 


304  BLIND   ALLEY 

of  the  marriage  of  Genevieve,  of  the  fun  it  would  be  for 
Stephen  to  lunch  once  more  out  of  his  own  house.  The 
object  of  the  trip  was  not  to  meet  the  Cawstons,  but  to 
give  Stephen  a  change,  and  Sir  Hugh  innocently  thought 
that  Stephen  did  not  know  it.  So  the  father  went  on 
chattering  until,  short  of  small  talk,  he  suddenly  asked 
the  young  man:  "  You're  pulling  round,  Stephen,  old 
chap.  Have  you  thought  at  all  of  what  you'll  do  next?  " 

"  You  mean  what  they  call  a  career,  don't  you?  " 

"  Yes.  It's  rather  awkward  your  not  having  taken 
your  degree.  Any  idea  of  going  back  to  the  'Varsity  to 
finish?  They're  making  it  easy  for  wounded  officers, 
you  know,  giving  them  pass  degrees  if  they  go  up  for  say 
six  or  twelve  months.  Hard  lines,  in  a  way ;  considering 
you  might  have  taken  a  first." 

"  Oh !  "  said  Stephen,  "  doesn't  matter.  Unless  you're 
dead  keen  on  it,  father,  I'd  as  soon  not  go  back.  It's 
too  late.  I'd  feel  out  of  it  at  school ;  that's  all  the  'Var- 
sity is.  At  least  that's  what  it  would  feel  like  now  after 
being  out  there  and  seeing  ..." 

"  Yes,  I  know,"  said  Sir  Hugh  hurriedly,  "  we  don't 
want  to  talk  about  that.  Only  if  you  don't  go  back  you'll 
find  it  rather  hard  to  do  any  good  in  the  diplomatic." 

"  I'm  not  so  struck  with  the  diplomatic.  Seems  to  me 
a  rather  dirty  game.  We  used  to  be  told  that  a  diplomat 
is  a  fellow  who  lies  abroad  for  the  good  of  his  country. 
Seems  to  me  he  hasn't  been  doing  so  much  good  as  all  that. 
Don't  know  that  I  want  to  join  the  people  who  have  made 
a  corner  in  snaky  finesse.  The  status  is  changing,  too ;  the 
popular  idea  seems  to  be  that  a  diplomat  is  either  a  damn 
fool  or  a  damn  blackguard.  They'll  be  getting  it  in  the 
neck  from  the  Labour  Party  soon,  and  judging  from  the 
mess  they've  made,  it  mightn't  be  a  bad  idea  to  recruit 
our  diplomats  from  the  boiler  makers  and  waitresses. 


AMONG  THE  YAHOOS  305 

Sir  Hugh  smiled.  "Well,  you  may  be  right.  Only 
it's  going  to  make  a  mess  of  your  career,  this  attitude  of 
yours.  It's  true  this  war's  upset  everybody's  career." 

"  Yes,  it's  made  a  mess  of  some  and  pushed  up  others. 
Same  old  total  in  a  hundred  years.  Fellows  have  gone 
out,  leaving  their  jobs,  and  the  unfit,  and  the  Cuthberts, 
and  the  men  of  forty-one  have  bagged  them.  I  suppose 
it's  all  right ;  in  a  way  one  wants  some  to  do  the  fighting, 
and  some  to  collar  the  swag  and  be  patriotic.  One  can 
be  the  hell  of  a  patriot  when  one's  over  forty-one.  Age 
makes  patriotism  safe." 

"  Don't  be  rude  to  your  poor  old  father,"  said  Sir  Hugh, 
laughing.  "  It's  not  his  fault  he  was  born  before  you 
were." 

"  I  don't  mean  you,"  said  Stephen.  "  I  mean  those 
swine  in  office,  like  Uncle  Angus.  Still,  what's  the  good  of 
talking?  Since  you're  not  shoving  me,  I  rather  think  I'd 
like  to  go  into  the  Bank.  You  could  squeeze  me  on  to 
a  high  stool?  " 

11  Yes,"  said  Sir  Hugh,  "  if  you  think  you'd  like  it." 

Then  they  talked  of  finance  nearly  all  the  way  to  town, 
and  Sir  Hugh  was  surprised  at  the  maturity  of  his  son. 
As  if  the  war  were  a  forcing  house.  He  had  read  up  for- 
eign exchange,  and  had  ideas  about  the  funding  of  the 
debt  that  staggered  the  old  financier.  He  supposed  that 
an  expenditure  now  risen  to  over  six  millions  a  day  needed 
new  finance.  Still,  they  had  a  warm  difference  of  opin- 
ion on  automatic  conversion  of  short  loans,  and  Stephen 
was  lifted  on  to  the  platform  at  Victoria  volubly  protest- 
ing that  the  Government  ought  to  bear  consols  so  as  to 
bring  the  price  down  and  buy  back  its  own  stock  dirt 
cheap. 

It  was  altogether  a  bright  day.  Stephen  was  whirled, 
"  to  take  his  mind  off  it ",  to  the  tailor,  whirled  to  the 


306  BLIND   ALLEY 

Army  and  Navy  Stores  to  buy  tobacco,  whirled  to  Hatch- 
ard's,  to  Holland's.  So  he  was  prepared  to  be  pleased  at 
lunch,  at  Angus  Cawston's  flat  in  Ashley  Gardens.  In- 
deed he  flirted  a  good  deal  with  Genevieve,  obviously  at- 
tracted by  her  straw  blondness.  Meanwhile,  Cawston 
talked.  He  talked  more  than  ever,  and  more  securely, 
for  now  he  was  no  longer  a  director  in  the  Drug  Control 
Office,  but  following  on  obscure  revolutions,  brought 
about  by  backbiting  other  directors,  scheming  to  steal 
their  work,  enlarging  his  own  staff  regardless  of  any 
need,  he  had  been  recognised  as  a  man  full  of  push  and 
go.  That  is,  he  had  pushed,  and  the  others  had  gone. 
So  he  was  Controller. 

"  Yes,"  he  said,  "  things  are  going  pretty  well.  We're 
extending  the  controls.  Got  to,  you  know.  When  you 
start  controlling  a  drug,  the  trade  puts  up  a  substitute. 
Then  you've  got  to  control  the  substitute.  Then  some- 
body, probably  a  Hun  who  calls  himself  a  Swiss,  thinks 
of  a  sub-substitute.  You  control  that.  And  so  on. 
There's  such  a  rush  on  drugs  that  by  the  time  the  war's 
done  I  guess  you  won't  be  able  to  buy  a  liver  pill  without 
my  ticket." 

"  Excuse  daddy,"  said  Genevieve.  "  He's  got  so  coarse 
since  he  started  controlling." 

"  My  dear  girl,  there's  a  war  on.  Put  that  in  your 
maidenly  pipe  and  smoke  it.  Besides,  it's  no  good  your 
talking;  you'll  soon  be  married,  and  when  Drayton  comes 
home  the  conversation  at  the  conjugal  hearth  will  centre 
round  ipecacuanha  and  atropine,  with  the  mysteries  of 
cocaine  dens  thrown  in  to  liven  things  up." 

"  Oh,  yes,"  said  Sir  Hugh,  "  I  forgot  to  congratulate 
you." 

Cawston  explained:  "Yes,  Drayton's  a  good  chap. 
Junior  partner  in  Drayton  and  Boho,  biggest  wholesale 


AMONG  THE  YAHOOS  307 

chemists  in  the  country.  They've  done  well  out  of  this 
war,  those  people.  Still,  I  suppose  they're  making 
amends." 

Everybody  laughed. 

"  There's  a  romance  for  you,  Genevieve,"  said  Stephen. 
"  The  profiteer,  like  a  conquering  prince,  marries  the 
daughter  of  the  conquered  prince,  otherwise  known  as 
the  Controller.  I  can  see  the  poetic  caption  in  the  Daily 
Mirror  with  your  names  under  incredible  photographs: 
Magnesia  King  Weds  Magnesia  Control,  or:  Controller's 
Daughter  to  Operate  on  the  Home  Front." 

"  Don't  be  silly,"  said  the  girl  sharply,  her  rather  fool- 
ish little  mouth  tightening.  She  was  sensitive  about 
Drayton  and  Boho.  After  all,  in  a  way,  they  were  in 
trade,  and  though  she  liked  Drayton  she  might  not  have 
married  him  if  the  firm  had  not  managed  to  build  three 
factories  out  of  excess  profits,  and  convinced  the  Inland 
Revenue  that  there  were  no  excess  profits  to  tax.  So 
Cawston  dropped  the  subject,  while  Sir  Hugh  reflected 
that  indeed  times  were  changing;  not  long  ago  no  Oakley, 
and  hardly  a  Cawston,  could  have  marrried  a  Drayton 
and  Boho,  because  they  would  not  have  met  one.  This 
harmonised  with  Cawston's  conversation;  he  was  talking 
of  men  made  by  the  war. 

"  Regular  turn-over,"  he  said.  "  There's  no  talk  of 
class  now,  and  a  jolly  good  thing  too.  We  had  to  get 
business  men  in  to  win  the  war." 

"  We  aren't  winning  it  very  fast,"  said  Sir  Hugh. 

"  Give  'em  time ;  they  aren't  a  bad  crowd,  really.  Look 
at  Geddes;  the  papers  say  he  was  a  railway  porter  once. 
Now  he's  controller  of  the  navy.  There's  lots  of  others, 
too,  less  high  up;  one  of  my  directors  was  a  clerk  in  a 
gas-stove  firm;  they're  all  over  the  Civil  Service,  pro- 
vision dealers,  pawnbrokers,  all  sorts  of  men  who  are 


308  BLIND   ALLEY 

saving  the  country  millions  a  week.  Seems  a  pity  the 
old  families  should  have  to  go.  Still,  there  you  are."  He 
heaved  a  fat,  philosophic  sigh.  "  It's  the  wheel  of  for- 
tune, as  Tennyson  says,  lowering  the  proud." 

There  was  silence  for  a  moment.  Everybody  was 
thinking  of  the  dead  ruling  class,  agreeing  that  it  had 
shown  itself  unworthy  to  rule,  and  yet,  except  perhaps 
Cawston,  rather  afraid  of  the  new  ruling  class.  The  old 
class  wanted  power,  the  new  class  wanted  power  and 
money.  The  old  class  had  played  the  game  and  lost  it; 
the  new  class  had  made  it  pay.  So  Sir  Hugh  asked  how 
Hubert  was  doing. 

"  He's  all  right,"  said  Cawston.  "  We've  had  a  letter 
from  him  at  last.  It  seems  the  Huns  are  being  quite 
decent  to  him.  They  are,  you  know,  in  the  Flying  Corps. 
He  writes  that  three  other  English  flying  men  and  himself 
dined  at  the  German  mess  the  other  night;  he  says  they 
did  themselves  very  well.  One  thing  they're  not  short 
of  is  fizz.  So  he's  merry  as  a  cricket;  he's  sent  me  a 
cheque  to  buy  Jinney  a  wedding  present  because  he's 
afraid  he  won't  get  to  Berlin  in  time  to  buy  it  before  the 
wedding." 

From  Hubert  the  talk  wandered  to  the  war;  the  older 
men  discussed  the  newspaper  maps,  the  collapse  of  Rou- 
mania  and  the  Cambrai  disappointment. 

"  Nasty  mess,"  said  Cawston.  "  Some  general  will  get 
rapped  over  the  knuckles  for  it.  Seems  to  me  he's  thrown 
away  our  chance  with  the  tanks  by  trotting  'em  out  be- 
fore we  had  enough  of  'em.  We  ought  to  have  waited 
till  we  had  thousands;  then  we'd  have  rushed  the  whole 
line.  If  I'd  been  the  general  at  Cambrai,  I'd  feel  like 
shooting  myself." 

"  Oh !  no,  you  wouldn't,"  said  Stephen.  "  Englishmen 
don't  do  those  things.  If  you  were  a  Russian  general  you 


AMONG  THE  YAHOOS  309 

might.  The  Russian  general  who's  beaten  always  com- 
mits suicide.  A  British  general  goes  to  live  in  Earl's 
Court." 

The  talk  wandered  off  to  the  part  the  Americans  would 
play,  and  Cawston  displayed  vast  knowledge  as  to  the 
numbers  landed  in  France.  Then  Genevieve  took  Stephen 
aside  to  show  him  photographs  of  herself  in  many  atti- 
tudes and  military  costumes.  So  Cawston  lowered  his 
voice  and  said  to  Sir  Hugh:  "  By  the  way,  I  ran  across 
Sylvia  the  other  day.  At  the  Petticoat  Lane  Fair  at 
Albert  Hall.  She  was  going  strong." 

Sir  Hugh  did  not  reply  for  a  moment.  He  did  not  like 
this  way  of  putting  it.  He  felt  it  implied  something.  So, 
with  some  hesitation  and  assumed  negligence,  he  said: 
"  Oh!  was  she  with  a  party?  " 

"  No.  She  had  a  nice  looking  young  soldier  with  her. 
A  fellow  called  March." 

Sir  Hugh's  mouth  grew  rigid:  "  Angus,"  he  said,  "  d'you 
mind  my  asking  you  whether  —  well,  is  there  any  talk 
going  round?  " 

Cawston  made  a  broad  gesture.  "  My  dear  fellow ! 
there's  always  talk  about  a  pretty  woman." 

"  I  want  to  know." 

"  Oh !  well,  if  you  insist,  I  should  say  she's  been  seen 
rather  too  often  with  him.  He  seems  to  get  leave  easily. 
Of  course  it  doesn't  matter  in  war  time." 

"  No,"  said  Sir  Hugh,  "  it  doesn't  matter  —  if  it  doesn't 
matter." 

XXVII 

"  MOLLY/'  said  Hart,  as  the  girl  put  on  her  cloak, 
"  where  are  you  going  to?  " 

"  Just  going  for  a  run  around.    It's  a  fine  night." 
"  Going  alone?  " 


310  BLIND  ALLEY 

"  Oh!  well,  you  never  know." 

"  Look  here,"  said  the  big  farmer,  standing  up.  "  Are 
you  going  to  meet  that  conscientious  swine,  or  ain't  you? 
Out  with  it." 

Molly  raised  her  chestnut  head  very  high.  "  I  shall 
please  myself,"  she  said. 

"  Oh!  "  said  Hart,  "  will  you?  Thinking  of  becoming 
Mrs.  White  Feather?  " 

"  What  if  I  do?  "  said  the  girl  aggressively.  "  Happen 
to  have  a  husband  handy  for  me?  " 

"Oh!"  said  Hart.  He  had  no  answer  ready.  "So 
that's  it.  Putting  up  with  what  you  can  get." 

"  I'm  not  putting  up  with  anybody,"  snarled  Molly. 
"  If  I'm  single,  it's  because  I  like  it,  and  now  perhaps 
I'm  tired  of  it.  Cheero,  good  evening." 

The  farmer  sat  down,  and  as  he  filled  his  pipe  reflected 
that  there  was  something  in  Molly's  point  of  view.  Of 
course,  she  wanted  to  get  married.  He  thought  of  con- 
sulting his  wife,  but  Mrs.  Hart  went  on  mending  his 
breeches  with  an  air  of  complete  aloofness.  "I'll  rive 
the  guts  out  of  her,"  he  remarked,  but  without  conviction. 

As  Molly  went  along  the  lane  she  realised  that  her 
father's  attitude  forced  her  decision.  She  had  been  hesi- 
tating for  two  or  three  weeks.  Once  she  had  seen  Cradoc 
in  the  distance,  and  turned  back  when  he  came  towards 
her.  Then  she  had  spoken  to  him  twice,  about  the 
weather.  As  the  man  was  polite  and  cold,  her  pride  had 
fired,  and  vaguely  there  had  formed  in  her  mind  a  desire 
to  bring  him  to  her  feet.  She  didn't  mean  anything,  of 
course,  but  she  did  not  like  to  think  that  he  took  it  so 
easily.  As  he  attempted  no  further  approach,  she  had 
that  morning  told  him  casually  that  if  it  was  a  fine 
moonlit  night  she'd  be  taking  a  walk  past  Policeman's 
House.  Now  she  sped  along  the  road,  a  new  thrill  of 


AMONG  THE  YAHOOS  311 

excitement  in  her  breast.  It  did  not  strike  her  that  he 
would  not  be  there,  so  the  sight  of  his  figure,  dark  against 
the  white  road,  seemed  natural.  For  a  moment  they 
walked  side  by  side.  When  at  last  he  spoke  she  was 
surprised.  She  expected  a  loverlike  speech,  and  actually 
Cradoc  had  been  thinking  of  something  else.  He  said: 
"  It's  a  funny  world.  Have  you  seen  the  posters  outside 
the  King's  Arms?  " 

"No.    What  about  them?" 

"  They're  asking  us  to  pray  for  victory.  And  they're 
backing  it  up  with  a  message  from  General  Robertson 
saying  that  it  is  only  when  the  whole  empire  unites  in 
prayer  as  well  as  in  work  that  we  can  look  forward  to  a 
successful  conclusion  —  and  all  that.  Admiral  Beatty, 
too.  He  says  that  when  Englishmen  can  look  out  on 
the  future  with  humbler  eyes  and  a  prayer  on  our  lips, 
then  we  can  begin  to  count  the  days  to  the  end.  Lovely 
idea !  I  wonder  whether  Beatty  really  thinks  a  prayer 
works  better  than  a  fifteen-inch  shell." 

"  I  don't  know,"  said  Molly.  "  Let's  stop.  I've  kicked 
a  stone  and  hurt  my  toe." 

They  stopped  on  the  road,  face  to  face,  and  awkward. 
Cradoc  stared  at  her,  half  cold.  Her  good  looks  still 
affected  him,  her  broad  squareness,  her  milk-white  skin, 
and  the  tangled  brown  hair.  But  she  had  failed  him 
once.  And  a  vague  hatred  mingled  with  his  desire. 

"  Isn't  there  anywhere  where  we  can  sit  down?  "  asked 
Molly.  "  Let's  go  in  these  and  see  if  we  can  find  a  log." 

Silently  they  went  into  Dead  Man's  Copse,  as  it  was 
called  since  the  strangled  airman  had  been  found  there. 
They  were  young  enough  not  to  care.  For  a  long  time 
they  sat  together  on  a  heap  of  hurdles,  the  girl  instinc- 
tively silent  and  alluring.  She  sat  relaxed,  very  white 
under  the  blazing  moon,  and  Cradoc  wanted  to  touch  her, 


312  BLIND  ALLEY 

realised  that  he  might,  yet  wondered  whether  he  should 
give  way  to  a  purely  physical  desire,  which  intellectual 
asceticism  made  contemptible.  Then  she  turned  towards 
him.  She  was  rather  angry  because  he  did  not  advance. 

"  Well?  "  she  said,  "  lost  your  tongue?  " 

"  I  don't  know  what  to  say,  Molly.  It's  good  to  be 
with  you  again." 

"  Doesn't  seem  to  be  much  fun  for  you."  He  did  not 
reply,  and  she  went  on.  "Why  are  you  sulking?  Be- 
cause of  what  I  said?  " 

"  Oh !  no.  It  was  natural  enough.  You  couldn't  go 
on  loving  a  man  who  wouldn't  do  as  others  did." 

After  a  long  pause  Molly  said:  "  I  dunno.  Seems  to 
me  all  that's  too  deep  for  a  girl.  Still  it's  just  as  you 
like." 

Cradoc  realised  that  she  was  offering  herself,  but  his 
pride  was  so  sore  that  he  wanted  to  humiliate  her.  So, 
harshly,  he  replied: 

"  Yes.    Have  you  nothing  else  to  say?  " 

She  flung  him  a  glance  of  hatred  and  half  admiration. 
"  Want  me  to  eat  dirt,  do  you?  I  will  if  you  like.  I'm 
not  particular.  So  you  can  have  it  straight:  if  you  want 
to  let  bygones  be  bygones,  and  go  on  as  we  were,  I  don't 
mind." 

Cradoc  hesitated  for  a  moment,  then  put  his  arm 
about  the  broad  shoulders  and  drew  the  girl  to  him.  The 
old  intoxication  rose  in  him  as  he  clasped  her,  but  now 
he  held  her  with  a  sort  of  royalty.  In  a  way  he  had 
not  suffered  in  vain,  for  he  was  her  master,  not  her  slave. 
He  raised  her  square  white  chin,  kissed  her  lips,  full  of 
exquisite  condescension. 


AMONG  THE   YAHOOS  313 

XXVIII 

SAVAGERY  seemed  once  more  to  have  crept  into  Ste- 
phen. The  dull  silence  which  had  often  turned  into  light 
ironic  humour  had  half  returned,  and  now  he  brooded 
again,  breaking  off  his  secret  meditations  only  to  indulge 
in  fits  of  anger.  It  did  not  occur  to  anybody  that  he 
was  different  since  Louise  had  given  up  nursing  him,  and 
returned  to  the  New  Hospital,  nor  was  it  noticed  that  he 
grew  lighter  when  she  came  to  Knapenden.  This  was  not 
infrequent,  for  she  had  given  up  nursing,  and  was  now 
assistant  secretary  at  the  hospital;  thus  she  could  come 
over  two  or  three  afternoons  a  week  to  assist  in  Stephen's 
convalescence  by  amusing  him.  His  eyesight  had  not 
suffered  from  shell-shock,  yet  reading  tired  him,  and  so 
Louise  took  to  reading  aloud  to  him.  She  expressed  her- 
self ideally,  for  she  began  by  bringing  her  own  literature, 
novels  by  Mr.  E.  F.  Benson,  essays  by  Mr.  E.  V.  Lucas, 
and  when  Stephen  preferred  other  books  she  said :  '  Just 
as  you  like/  and  patiently  sitting  by  his  side,  endlessly 
read  him  Hartley  Withers  on  finance,  and  without  any 
apparent  repulsion  sundry  works  of  Mr.  E.  D.  Morel. 

Stephen  took  a  double  pleasure  in  this.  The  stuff  inter- 
ested him,  was,  he  felt,  building  him,  and  at  the  same 
time  he  liked  the  soothing  low  voice,  the  fine-cut  profile, 
the  shadow  of  the  black  lashes,  and  the  tender  mouth. 
Sometimes,  at  the  end  of  a  chapter,  she  looked  up 
and  smiled,  a  soft,  veiled  smile,  and  life  felt  easy.  He 
dilated,  as  a  parched  flower  under  gentle  rain.  Once  he 
said: 

"  Louise,  you  make  hatred  incredible.  You  sit  there 
like  a  great  fat  water  lily,  whitely  basking  in  a  shady 
pool,  and  you  make  the  water  greener." 

"  I'm  not  fat,"  said  Louise,  pouting. 


314  BLIND  ALLEY 

"Sorry.  Let  us  say  capacious,  spacious;  a  spacious 
soul,  that's  you,  with  room  in  it  for  all  the  love  in  the 
world.  And  as  all  the  love  of  the  world  crowds  it  there's 
no  room  in  it  for  hate." 

She  smiled,  and  taking  up  the  book  again,  began  to 
read. 

Sometimes  they  played  billiards.  Stephen  had  got  over 
the  annoyance  of  the  long  journey  round  the  table  which 
his  short  leg  imposed  on  him,  and  he  no  longer  struggled 
to  set  the  balls  in  place,  or  to  get  them  out  of  their 
pockets.  He  liked  to  be  waited  upon  by  Louise,  for  it 
was  not  like  being  waited  upon:  it  was  more  like  being 
with  somebody  in  the  company  of  whom  everything 
turned  out  all  right.  She  was  much  better  than  he,  and 
could  give  him  easily  twenty  points  in  the  hundred. 
This  hurt  his  vanity,  and  now  and  then  they  quarrelled 
amicably,  he  charging  her  with  foul  play,  she  with  a 
baby's  petulance.  It  was  familiar,  full  of  comradeship, 
and  here,  too,  he  was  unconsciously  pleased  by  the  lines 
of  her  rather  full  figure  as  she  stooped  over  the  table. 
She  contented  him.  He  grew  aware  of  it  once,  suddenly. 
They  had  interrupted  their  game  to  talk,  that  is,  for 
Louise  to  listen  as  usual  while  Stephen  expressed  his 
vigorous  contempt  for  squire,  manufacturer  and  labour 
man: 

"  They  say  that  the  Italians  broke  at  Caporetto  be- 
cause of  socialist  propaganda.  Lies  and  lies.  It  makes 
one  sick.  Why  can't  people  say  simply  that  men  run 
because  they're  frightened?  What's  the  hope  for  the 
future?  In  capitalists  who  want  to  grab  all  the  money 
in  the  world?  In  labour  men  who  want  to  grab  the  cap- 
italists' money?  In  landowners  who  want  to  hold  on  to 
everything  they've  got?  My  God!  Henry  James  is  right: 
Cats  and  monkeys,  monkeys  and  cats,  the  whole  of  life 


AMONG  THE   YAHOOS  315 

is  there.  And  they  talk  of  humanity!  Humanity's  the 
only  thing  that  doesn't  deserve  it.  One  understands  St. 
Paul  praying  for  Judgment  Day  so  that  this  race  might 
be  cleaned  off  the  world,  and  leaving  it  to  the  tiger  and 
the  wolf  whose  blood-thirst  is  only  hunger,  while  man's 
blood-thirst  is  a  hobby.  So  much  the  better,  perhaps: 
in  the  next  war  he  may  learn  to  kill  more  and  to  kill  'em 
quicker." 

Louise  raised  soft  eyes  to  him:  "  What  dreadful  things 
you  say,  Stephen.  Still,  I  somehow  understand  why  you 
feel  them." 

He  looked  at  her  for  a  moment,  then,  putting  his  hand 
on  her  shoulder,  said:  "Dear  old  Louise,"  and  bending, 
kissed  her  on  the  cheek,  gently  at  first  as  a  brother,  but 
long,  as  a  lover.  She  did  not  withdraw,  and  hoarsely  he 
murmured:  "Sweet  Louise." 

Also  he  had  again  taken  to  riding  with  his  father  on 
the  upper  downs.  A  need  for  activity  had  invaded  him, 
and  he  was  with  difficulty  prevented  from  turning  up  at 
the  meet  of  the  East  Sussex  hunt. 

"  Why  shouldn't  I  hunt?  Sir  Richard  Calmady  hunted, 
and  he  had  still  less  legs  than  I." 

But  the  idea  of  a  possible  toss  was  terrifying,  and  so 
Sir  Hugh  snatched  all  the  time  he  could  from  the  Board 
of  Control  to  take  his  son  across  the  smoother  downs. 
Stephen  talked  more  to  Sir  Hugh  than  to  other  people; 
he  found  him  sympathetic  to  his  anti-militarism,  which 
was  a  reaction  rather  than  a  theory.  When  they  walked 
their  horses,  Stephen  liked  to  make  long  catalogues,  the 
international  gallows  he  called  them,  on  which  he  was 
prepared  to  hang  Mr.  Leo  Maxse,  Baron  Sonnino,  Tirpitz, 
Colonel  Will  Thome,  General  Korniloff.  By  degrees  he 
extended  his  gallows  to  a  capacity  of  a  couple  of  hundred 
necklaces.  "  I  say  hang  'em,"  he  said.  "  Don't  shoot 


316  BLIND   ALLEY 

'em:  we've  got  to  get  out  of  the  habit  of  making  ammu- 
nition. Father,  do  you  know,  the  very  sight  of  khaki 
makes  me  ill." 

Sir  Hugh  laughed,  and  tried  to  quiet  him,  but  so  much 
vibrated  in  him  in  sympathy  that  he  seldom  stopped  his 
son.  Also  Stephen  was  difficult  to  stop.  He  was  growing 
sure  that  the  military  mind  is  an  inferior  mind. 

"  Everybody  talks  about  the  genius  of  Haig  and  Mack- 
ensen,  and  makes  out  that  Hindenburg  is  the  hell  of  an 
intellectual  bug  —  and  what's  it  amount  to?  Working 
out  transport  calculations  which  a  railway  clerk  on  the 
London  and  Brighton  could  do  in  his  head,  except  that 
he'd  lose  less  luggage;  and  seeing  that  the  men  get  their 
rations  with  an  unpunctuality  which  would  make  Joseph 
Lyons  ashamed;  and  pounding  a  place  to  bits  and  telling 
men  to  go  and  sit  in  it,  and  shouting:  '  Come  on,  you 
fellows! '  like  a  butcher  shouts  '  Buy  my  pretty  meat.' 
You  should  see  'em  at  work,  our  brass  hats.  I  remember 
once,  and  I  could  tell  you  ten  stories  like  it,  we  could  see 
a  German  battery  from  the  0.  Pip  that  was  shelling  us 
on  the  left.  So  I  rang  up  and  asked  if  we  could  put 
down  a  few  rounds.  '  Can't  be  done,'  said  a  voice.  I 
asked  why.  '  Because  it's  not  in  your  sector;  it's  a  job 
for  Group  Q.'  '  But,'  I  said, '  Group  Q  can't  see  the  bat- 
tery as  we  can;  there's  rising  ground  between  them.' 
'  Can't  be  helped,'  said  the  voice.  Then  I  realised  that 
the  creature  at  the  other  end  must  either  be  senile  or  a 
major-general,  and  I  started  '  sirring '  him  for  all  I  was 
worth.  But  it  was  no  good.  We  didn't  put  down  a 
single  shell,  and  when  the  Hun  battery  had  done  its 
damndest,  it  moved  off  somewhere  else.  Then,  ah!  then 
Group  Q  had  got  its  chits  through,  and  started  shelling 
the  place  where  the  Hun  had  been  sitting,  oh !  like  billy- 
oh." 


AMONG  THE  YAHOOS  317 

"  Did  you  ever  meet  your  friend?  "  asked  Sir  Hugh, 
smiling. 

"  Yes.  I  went  up  to  Divisional  H.  Q.  a  few  days  later, 
and  I  met  him.  It  was  a  dear  old  thing  entirely  plas- 
tered with  ribbons  which  he'd  won  at  the  front,  including 
a  few  which  he'd  won  at  the  back.  We  had  a  few  words 
in  a  respectful  '  beg  your  pardon '  sort  of  way.  But  he 
held  the  honest  views  of  the  simple  soldier,  who  never 
asked  the  reason  why  and  had  neither  done  nor  died. 
'No  poachin',  young  fellow;  when  youVe  lived  as  long 
as  I  have  you'll  know  it  won't  do  to  pinch  another  man's 
bird.  No  poachin'.  It's  the  same  for  Huns  as  for  pheas- 
ants.' Then  he  let  out  his  Sam  Browne.  And  that's  the 
stuff,  father,  that's  England's  gory  glory.  The  day  those 
people  are  up  against  civilians,  they  won't  crumble,  oh! 
no,  but  the  row  will  be  over  before  they've  found  out 
what  it's  about,  and  they'll  be  sitting  in  a  cell  at  Worm- 
wood Scrubbs  wondering  why  the  batman  doesn't  come 
when  they  ring  the  bell." 

Sometimes  they  talked  generally.  Sir  Hugh's  sense  of 
consistency  was  shocked  when,  early  in  November,  the 
Bolsheviks  suddenly  declared  the  German  pretensions 
inordinate  and  prepared  to  fight:  the  press  at  once 
dropped  the  German  agent  stunt,  forgot  all  about  Braun- 
stein  and  Zederblum,  and  grew  quite  enthusiastic  over 
Mr.  Lenine  and  Mr.  Trotsky.  Thus,  when  at  the  end  of 
the  month  the  Lansdowne  letter  came  out,  Sir  Hugh  felt 
that  somebody  had  at  last  expressed  him.  ...  He 
couldn't  swallow  Mr.  Ramsay  Macdonald,  any  more  than 
he  could  swallow  the  patriotism  of  Miss  Christabel  Pank- 
hurst.  They  were  too  rowdy  for  him,  but  Lord  Lans- 
downe, so  guarded  in  his  proposals  to  negotiate,  so  ani- 
mated by  moderation,  formulated  what  Sir  Hugh  had 
only  glimpsed:  that  his  class,  which  he  still  loved,  must 


318  BLIND  ALLEY 

fall  before  anarchy  if  peace  was  not  soon  made.  He 
was  so  enraged  when  the  newspapers  described  Lord 
Lansdowne  as  an  old  man  in  decay  that  he  wrote  a  furious 
letter  to  the  Times,  which  did  not  print  it,  pointing  out 
that  Mr.  Clemenceau  was  still  older,  and  in  his  view 
much  more  decayed.  He  also  wrote  a  letter  to  Lord 
Lansdowne  himself,  expressing  his  approval  and  put  him- 
self down  as  a  member  of  any  organisation  embodying 
his  views. 

Stephen  gave  him  no  sympathy:  "They're  all  the 
same,"  he  said.  "  Tories  and  Radicals.  They  all  hate 
the  other  side  instead  of  loving  their  own.  I  suppose 
I'm  going  into  politics;  they  give  an  opportunity  to  ran- 
cour, and  I  suppose  I'll  go  on  the  democratic  side  because 
I'm  fed  up  with  the  old  side,  but  I'll  never  pull  it  off 
with  people  who  wear  white  ties  or  india-rubber  collars. 
It'll  be  the  same  as  it  was  out  there.  We  were  all  T.  G's, 
and  we  tried  to  carry  on  with  the  N.  E.  T's,  but  it  was 
no  good." 

"  T.  G.,  temporary  gentleman,  I  know  that,"  said  Sir 
Hugh,  "  but  what's  an  N.  E.  T.?  " 

"Oh,  Not  Even  That.  How  those  fellows  hated  us! 
They  couldn't  get  the  hang  of  the  talk ;  they  used  to  call 
us  old  dear  when  they  meant  'old  bean,  and  that  sort  of 
thing.  Looked  upon  us  as  a  lot  of  Eton  and  Oxford 
snobs,  and  clustered  among  themselves,  and  wished  they 
could  get  their  pips  off.  Talk  of  mixing  the  classes! 
You  can  do  it,  but  it's  like  mixing  port  and  ginger  ale; 
makes  a  rotten  drink." 

Lady  Oakley  found  Stephen  very  trying.  She  knew 
she  must  not  encourage  him  to  think  about  the  war,  but 
she  could  not  find  anything  else  to  talk  about,  and  she 
did  not  like  his  attitude.  He  might  be  ill,  but  his  con- 
versation sounded  seditious.  One  morning  they  had  a 


AMONG  THE  YAHOOS  319 

real  quarrel.  Lady  Oakley  was  looking  at  the  war  map, 
and  asked  Stephen  where  Paschendaele  was. 

"Oh,"  said  Stephen,  "that's  not  a  place;  it's  a  novel 
by  Elinor  Glyn." 

Lady  Oakley  flushed.  "  I  wish  you  wouldn't  treat  me 
as  though  I  were  a  fool.  You  seem  to  think  this  war's 
funny." 

"Well,  it  has  its  humour,"  said  Stephen,  who  felt 
rather  ashamed  of  his  joke. 

"  You've  a  queer  sense  of  humour.  Apparently  you 
can  read  the  newspapers,  which  are  fuller  and  fuller  of 
atrocities,  and  think  that  humorous." 

"  Atrocities,"  said  Stephen.  "  Yes,  I've  noticed  ever 
since  Lansdowne  wrote  that  letter  the  papers  have  been 
pumping  up  atrocities  for  all  they're  worth.  Keep  up 
the  hate.  God  save  us  from  peace." 

"  There  must  be  no  peace,"  said  Lady  Oakley,  "  until 
we've  won.  We  shall  never  sheathe  the  sword  .  .  ." 
She  stopped,  remembering  that  these  were  the  words  of 
Mr.  Asquith,  whose  name  she  did  not  care  to  mention. 
"  Anyhow  it  is  our  duty  to  make  an  end  of  German 
militarism.  We  must  see  to  it  that  they  are  made  pow- 
erless to  intrigue  and  organise  against  us  again.  Never 
more  must  they  have  a  colony  from  which  to  raise  black 
armies,  or  to  start  submarine  bases.  I  suppose  Lord 
Lansdowne  wants  to  give  them  back.  Well,  they  shan't 
be  given  back.  Our  own  colonies  wouldn't  allow  it,  for 
one  thing." 

Stephen  laughed.  "  Oh,  mother,  it's  a  pity  women 
can't  stand  for  Parliament;  you'd  be  a  terrific  success 
under  the  National  Party  label." 

"Yes,  I've  joined  the  National  Party,  and  why  not? 
They're  the  only  people  who  are  going  to  do  anything, 
close  our  markets  to  dumped  German  goods,  make  'em 


320  BLIND  ALLEY 

pay,  and  keep  the  Hun  out.  What  have  you  got  against 
the  National  Party,  I'd  like  to  know?  " 

"  Oh,  nothing,  every  play  needs  its  sanguinary  part, 
only  father  and  I  are  pals  of  Lansdowne." 

"What  d'you  mean?" 

"  Yes,"  said  Sir  Hugh  suddenly.  "  I  agree  with  Lans- 
downe, and  I've  written  to  tell  him  so." 

The  hot  angry  flush  rose  again  in  Lady  Oakley's 
cheeks. 

"  Oh,"  she  said.  "  Then,  Hugh,  I  wish  you  luck  with 
your  associates." 

She  left  the  room  and  they  did  not  speak  again  that 
day.  Even  at  meals  Lady  Oakley  would  not  open  her 
mouth. 

"  Been  a  bit  of  a  rumpus,"  said  Lee  to  Mrs.  Marsden. 
"Politics,  I  gather.  That's  what  it'll  be  like  if  the 
women  get  the  vote." 

"  I  quite  agree  with  you,"  said  Mrs.  Marsden.  "  Nasty, 
unsexed  creatures." 

XXIX 

DINNER  that  night  was  a  silent  meal.  Sir  Hugh  had 
returned  from  Ashford  only  just  in  time  to  dress.  Lady 
Oakley  looked  rigid,  while  Sir  Hugh  ate  what  was  put 
before  him  and  seemed  surprised  when  it  disappeared 
from  his  plate.  Monica  was  not  present,  and  nobody 
enquired  about  her,  for  Stephen,  responding  to  his  parents' 
mood,  said  hardly  anything.  At  last,  when  Lady  Oakley 
rose,  she  said: 

"  Don't  be  too  long  over  your  port,  Hugh,"  and  went 
out. 

After  a  moment  Stephen  put  down  his  glass  and  said: 

"  The  mater's  rather  hipped.    Too  much  temperament. 


AMONG  THE  YAHOOS  321 

Goes  up  and  down  like  a  dear  old  barometer  in  April. 
Suppose  it's  my  fault;  she  came  and  sat  down  with  me 
this  afternoon  prepared  to  shed  an  atmosphere  of  love 
and  peace,  but  by  the  time  she'd  told  me  how  many 
girls  she'd  collared  for  the  land  and  for  the  W.  A.  A.  C.'s 
I  was  getting  ready  to  bristle.  She  tried  to  get  me  to 
join  the  National  Party,  the  latest  stunt:  thumbs  up  for 
the  British,  thumbs  down  for  the  Hun." 

"  Yes,"  said  Sir  Hugh,  thinking  of  something  else. 

"  Well,  I'm  no  pal  of  the  Hun,  but  somehow  I  feel  like 
poor  old  Ball,  who  was  sorry  when  he  potted  them.  I've 
just  been  reading  his  book.  Of  course,  he  was  one  of 
the  best,  but  I  do  wish  they'd  give  Captain  Ball,  V.  C., 
a  rest.  He  did  his  bit,  and  he  did  it  damn  well,  and 
that's  all  there  is  to  it.  Makes  one  sick,  this  hero-wor- 
ship ;  when  people  talk  to  me  about  my  blessed  leg  I  feel 
they're  pulling  it.  If  I  hadn't  been  laid  out  I  shouldn't 
be  a  hero,  and  Ball  wouldn't  be  a  hero  if  he  hadn't 
crashed.  In  peace  time  one  can't  be  a  hero  just  because 
there's  no  chance  of  stopping  one,  but  in  war  time  people 
like  me  and  others,  who  do  their  bit  because  it's  the 
thing,  get  gushed  over  something  sickening.  Mother 
tried  to  make  me- play  a  little  game:  make  a  list  of  the 
ten  greatest  men  living.  Started  with  Lloyd  George, 
rolled  over  my  timid  suggestion  that  it  wasn't  fair  to 
leave  out  George  R.  Sims,  and  stuck  in  poor  old  Ball. 
Some  people  would  call  that  single-mindedness.  I  call 
it  monomania." 

There  was  a  silence.  Then  Stephen  bent  towards  his 
father  and  said  gently:  "I  say,  I  know  it's  jolly  hard 
lines,  but  it'll  pan  out  all  right.  Trust  Sylvia  always  to 
come  down  butter-side  up." 

"Sylvia?  "said  Sir  Hugh.  "  What  d'you  mean?  What 
about  Sylvia?" 


322  BLIND  ALLEY 

The  young  man  started.  "  Oh !  sorry.  I  saw  you 
were  down  in  the  mouth.  I  thought  you  knew." 

"  Knew  what?  "  said  Sir  Hugh,  now  excited. 

"  Oh,  well,  it's  not  for  me  to  talk  about  it.  The 
mater'll  do  that.  Been  a  bit  of  a  row  with  Andy,  I 
think.  Shouldn't  have  said  anything  about  it,"  he  added, 
with  unusual  tenderness  in  his  voice,  "  only  you  seem  to 
have  the  pip." 

"  Where's  Monica?  "  asked  Sir  Hugh. 

"  Upstairs  with  Sylvia." 

"  Oh,"  said  Sir  Hugh.  "  H'm,  I  think  I'll  have  a  word 
with  your  mother."  He  went  into  the  drawing-room, 
where  Lady  Oakley  was  reading  a  novel,  turning  over 
the  pages  very  fast. 

"  What's  this  I  hear  about  Sylvia?  " 

"  She's  come  back.    Andy's  found  out." 

"  Found  out  what?  " 

Lady  Oakley  jumped  to  her  feet.  "  Oh,  Hugh,  how 
can  you  be  so  dense?  I  gave  you  a  hint  nearly  six 
months  ago.  Don't  you  remember  I  told  you  we'd  better 
not  ask  Mr.  March  down?  But  you  never  remember 
anything." 

"  March,  March!  But  then  ..."  Sir  Hugh  shrank 
from  sudden  understanding;  incidents  connected  them- 
selves: that  conversation  with  his  wife,  what  Angus 
Cawston  had  told  him,  the  glimpse  of  Sylvia  in  the  car 
last  January.  This  was  horrible.  No,  it  couldn't  be 
true.  But  it  must  be  true.  Here  were  details. 

"  She's  in  an  awful  state,"  said  Lady  Oakley.  "  She 
ran  down  this  afternoon  and  it  was  all  I  could  do  to 
prevent  her  from  blurting  it  out  before  the  servants. 
Monica  and  I  have  been  watching  to  keep  her  in  her 
bedroom." 

"  Are  you  sure  there's  no  mistake?  " 


AMONG  THE  YAHOOS  323 

"  Of  course  there's  no  mistake.  It's  no  use  pretend- 
ing between  ourselves.  It's  been  going  on  for  months, 
and  I  expect  half  London's  talking  about  them.  Really, 
Sylvia's  too  big  a  fool.  She  didn't  even  travel  by  a 
separate  train,  and  of  course  somebody  saw  them,  and 
of  course  somebody  talked.  Andy  knows  all  about  it. 
He  doesn't  seem  to  have  wasted  any  time:  she  was  served 
with  the  divorce  papers  this  morning." 

"My  daughter!  "  said  Sir  Hugh. 

"  Yes,  your  daughter.  But  for  heaven's  sake  don't 
let's  be  dramatic.  I  expect  the  thing  will  have  to  go 
through,  and  they  can  get  married  next  year." 

"  You  mean  she's  to  marry  young  March." 

"  But  what  else  is  she  to  do?  " 

"  He's  a  rotter,"  said  Sir  Hugh. 

"  Oh,  all  men  are  rotters  one  way  or  another,  but  that's 
not  the  question.  She  hasn't  the  choice.  She'll  simply 
have  to  go  back  to  town  and  keep  quiet  till  it's  all  blown 
over." 

Though  Sir  Hugh  did  not  care  for  Sylvia  as  for  Monica, 
and  for  neither  of  them  as  for  Louise,  his  fatherhood 
rebelled.  "  Look  here,  she's  not  to  be  put  away  like 
that.  I'm  not  excusing  her,  but  she's  not  going  to  be 
shut  up  in  London.  She  can  stay  here.  And  as  for 
marrying  March,  we'll  see." 

Lady  Oakley  paced  up  and  down.  For  some  time  she 
raved  at  him.  He  was  a  sentimental  fool;  he  had  the 
practical  sense  of  a  minor  poet.  Didn't  he  realise  the 
talk  it  would  make  in  the  county?  Didn't  he  under- 
stand that  it  might  almost  be  kept  out  of  the  papers? 
That  the  two  could  marry,  go  abroad  for  a  bit  after 
peace,  and  then  get  back?  She  had  no  patience  with 
him.  Sir  Hugh  remained  obstinate  until  Lady  Oakley 
fluked  an  argument: 


324  BLIND  ALLEY 

"  Besides,  it's  impossible  for  her  to  stay  here.  All 
that  talk  world  damage  Monica." 

Sir  Hugh  suddenly  bent,  and  buried  his  face  in  his 
hands.  It  moved  Lady  Oakley  to  see  her  old  husband 
so  broken,  so  she  went  across,  and  put  her  arms  about 
his  shoulders.  "  It'll  be  all  right,"  she  whispered,  and 
kissed  him  again  and  again  on  his  high  forehead,  on  his 
beautiful  big  hands.  After  a  moment  he  said: 

"  Things  seem  to  come  all  together.  Now  Sylvia,  and 
yesterday  that  treaty." 

"  What  treaty? "  said  Lady  Oakley,  and  wondered 
whether  he  were  delirious. 

"  The  secret  treaty  between  France  and  Russia.  It 
was  in  the  Manchester  Guardian.  I  brought  the  issue 
down.  Here  it  is."  Lady  Oakley  took  a  crumpled  cut- 
ting, marked  December  12,  1917.  It  did  not  interest  her 
in  the  least. 

"  Well?  "  she  said,  handing  it  back. 

"  This  is  hideous,"  said  Sir  Hugh,  "  hideous.  Here's 
Russia  practically  allowed  to  carve  bits  off  Germany  and 
Austria,  allowed  to  refuse  freedom  to  Poland;  and  not 
a  word  about  what  the  population  thinks,  not  a  word 
about  self-determination.  Is  that  the  sort  of  thing  Wil- 
son brought  America  in  for?  To  grab?  To  extend  em- 
pires? And  in  exchange  the  French  are  not  going  to 
have  only  Alsace-Lorraine,  without  the  people  having  a 
chance  to  vote  for  or  against,  but  they're  to  have  the 
coal  mines  of  the  Saar,  German  land!  and  to  make  a 
buffer  State  on  the  left  bank  of  the  Rhine,  detaching  it 
by  force  from  Germany,  in  the  name  of  universal  free- 
dom! Is  that  what  Wilson  came  in  for?  Just  to  per- 
petuate the  old  injustices  by  making  new  ones?  Oh,  it's 
impossible.  I've  thanked  God  for  Wilson  before  now, 
the  only  clean  man,  the  only  just  man  that  the  Entente 


AMONG  THE  YAHOOS  325 

has  thrown  up.  The  Americans  have  come  into  this 
without  asking  for  an  acre  or  a  dollar,  the  only  clean 
people  of  us  all  —  just  as  we  went  in,  we  thought,  to 
defend  ourselves,  to  protect  the  little  neutrals.  We  went 
in  clean,  and  we  come  out,  crushing  and  grabbing,  trying 
to  annex  by  force,  trying  to  squeeze  the  other  side  for 
money.  A  pretty  beginning  for  a  League  of  Nations! 
To  bequeath  a  legacy  of  hatred  in  every  corner  of 
Europe,  by  leaving  everywhere  national  sores  to  fester. 
Will  Wilson  escape,  I  wonder?  " 

"  Oh,  never  mind  Wilson,"  said  Lady  Oakley.  "  It's 
Sylvia  we're  talking  about.  Anyhow,  you  agree  she 
must  go  on  living  in  town." 

"  All  right,"  said  Sir  Hugh  miserably. 

"  And  don't  let  your  mind  dwell  on  it,  and  all  these 
politics.  What  does  it  matter  what  the  Manchester 
Guardian  says?  Everybody  knows  they're  in  German 
pay.  You'd  better  go  to  bed.  Or  read  a  book.  Here, 
have  this  book,"  and  she  thrust  the  "  Tree  of  Heaven  " 
into  his  hand.  Obediently  he  began  to  read. 

XXX 

SIR  HUGH  and  Monica  amused  themselves  by  walking 
up  Edgware  Road ;  they  were  staying  a  few  days  in  town 
to  cheer  up  Sylvia,  who  felt  lonely  and  outcast  in  her 
Baker  Street  flat.  The  house  in  Connaught  Square  was 
only  half  open  and  felt  bleak,  but  Edgware  Road  was 
gay  in  spite  of  the  grey  sky  and  black  dampness  of  the 
pavement  of  this  soft,  moist  December  morning. 

"  It's  funny,"  said  Monica,  "  after  Knapenden.  I  sup- 
pose we'd  get  used  to  London  if  we  lived  here.  It  seems 
queer  to  see  a  crowd."  She  pointed  at  a  butter  queue 
outside  a  store. 


326  BLIND  ALLEY 

"  They  seem  rather  short  of  things  here,"  said  Sir 
Hugh ;  "  in  spite  of  voluntary  rations  there  doesn't  seem 
to  be  as  much  bread  and  meat  as  there  is  at  home.  Still, 
they  get  sugar,  which  we  don't.  A  case  of  gastronomic 
justice." 

They  liked  the  broad,  half  well-to-do,  half  squalid 
street.  "  A  real  London  street,"  said  Sir  Hugh,  "  full  of 
mercantilism,  pleasure,  love,  and  detachment.  They  say 
we  don't  feel  the  war  in  Sussex,  and  indeed  we're  sleepy 
enough.  We  don't  think  of  anything  in  particular,  but 
here  they  think  of  something  else  than  war.  I  bet  there's 
not  much  hate  in  London." 

"  Well,  there's  no  hate  in  Knapenden." 

Sir  Hugh  did  not  reply.  He  was  thinking  of  a  recent 
trouble.  Apparently  Cradoc  had  been  taunted  by  Far- 
cet,  the  cobbler,  who  had  confessed  to  being  a  C.  0.,  but 
as  he'd  heard  that  the  Tribunal  didn't  want  two  cases 
in  the  same  village  and  would  let  him  off  if  he  would 
appeal  on  domestic  reasons,  he'd  got  off  easy.  Cradoc 
seemed  to  have  been  infuriated,  called  him  the  kind  of 
vile  and  crafty  liar  that  brings  ignominy  on  the  noblest 
causes.  He  had  struck  him,  too,  and  Lady  Oakley,  on 
hearing  this,  had  apparently  discerned  an  opportunity. 
She  had  raved  to  Mr.  Denny  about  cowards  ready  to 
make  benefits  from  their  country  and  too  cowardly  to 
fight  for  it,  about  liars  who'd  defend  their  property  if 
invaded,  scum  who  ought  to  be  flogged,  starved,  or  exiled 
to  an  island,  some  other  island,  wretched,  weedy  crea- 
tures, not  a  single  chest  among  the  lot  of  them.  In  the 
end  she  had  reported  Cradoc  to  the  Pelham  Committee 
and  he  had  been  rearrested. 

They  went  right  up  to  Paddington  Green.  Sir  Hugh 
talked  very  little,  except  about  the  latest  speeches  of 
Mr.  Lloyd  George  and  Mr.  Balfour  on  the  knock-out 


AMONG  THE  YAHOOS  327 

blow.  Yes,  the  knock-out  was  all  right.  He  too  wanted 
the  knock-out;  but  this  endless,  purposeless  fighting, 
this  entire  lack  of  desire  for  any  end  beyond  victory, 
this  half-expressed  contempt  for  the  League  of  Nations, 
this  indifference  to  any  idea  of  a  new  peaceful  order, 
this  cynical  belief  that  all  men  were  greedy,  must  ever- 
lastingly fight  and  grab,  could  never  peacefully  live 
within  their  boundaries  —  it  hurt  him  dreadfully.  His 
mind  swerved. 

"  Monica,  you're  not  talking  much.  I've  been  think- 
ing the  last  few  months  that  you're  not  very  happy." 

"  No,  father,  I'm  afraid  I'm  not." 

"  What  is  it,  darling?  " 

"  Nothing.     I  mean  —  life's  so  difficult." 

"  Yes,  I  know,  in  times  like  these." 

"  Oh,  it's  not  only  the  times.  Father  —  were  you  very 
much  in  love  with  mother?  " 

"My  dear  child!"  He  did  not  know  what  to  say. 
"Well,  I  suppose  so." 

"  She  must  have  been  very  pretty." 

"Very  pretty,"  repeated  Sir  Hugh,  and  wandered  off 
into  the  past.  Then  Monica  took  his  arm  and  mur- 
mured : 

"  Supposing  she'd  been  married,  father,  and  you'd  loved 
her  all  the  same;  do  you  think  you'd  have  been  very 
wrong?  " 

"  Why,  of  course,  I  ..."  He  stopped.  He  had  still 
loved  Mrs.  Douglas  after  her  marriage.  "  Well,"  he  said, 
"  one  can't  help  loving." 

Monica  did  not  reply  for  a  long  time,  and  when  he 
looked  at  her  again  she  was  dabbing  her  red  eyes  through 
her  veil.  He  hardly  dared  understand  her,  and  yet  he 
did ;  in  the  sweetness  of  his  tact  he  did  not  question  her, 
but  pressed  her  hand  against  his  side  and  said: 


328  BLIND   ALLEY 

"  Monica,  darling.  One  can't  help  loving,  and  one 
should  never  try  to.  Loving  is  much  finer  than  being 
loved.  It's  more  generous.  I  don't  know  what  you  mean, 
but  if  indeed  you  love  some  one  you  can't  marry,  never 
mind;  be  happy  that  you  can  love.  Being  in  love  is 
being  alive.  Think  of  poor  Sylvia  whom  we're  going  to 
see  in  a  moment.  She  didn't  really  love  Andy ;  he  didn't 
love  her.  I'm  not  so  sure  that  she  loves  March.  She's 
not  taking  it  well.  She's  not  proud.  She's  not  standing 
up  for  her  own  dignity.  She's  only  afraid  that  people 
will  be  nasty  to  her.  Oh,  Monica,  don't  be  afraid  of 
loving.  It  may  be  a  sin  to  give  way  to  love,  but  if  one 
doesn't  love  one  sins  against  oneself.  And  that's  mortal 
sin.  There,  don't  cry,  I  won't  question  you.  But  if  ever 
you  want  to  talk,  your  old  father  will  know  how  to  listen 
to  you.  He  wishes  he'd  had  somebody  to  listen  to  him 
once  upon  a  time." 

XXXI 

SIR  HUGH  was  very  happy.  All  those  personal 
troubles  and  frets,  Sylvia's  wretched  affair,  Stephen's 
wound  and  strange  humour,  Monica's  half -confessed  pain, 
the  harshness  of  his  wife,  backwashes  into  his  family  of 
the  tide  of  war,  he  thought  of  them  no  more.  Before 
him  lay  a  newspaper  with  the  incredible  news  that  Ger- 
many had  accepted  the  Bolshevik  terms :  no  annexations, 
no  indemnities,  self-determination  for  conquered  peoples. 
He  reflected  that  the  revolution  of  March  in  Russia  must 
have  been  the  revolution  of  the  world.  Never  before 
had  a  conqueror  accepted  as  a  basis  for  a  treaty  any- 
thing but  by  the  arbitrament  of  his  sword.  Always  had 
the  vanquished  passed  bent-browed  under  the  patibulary 
fork— rand  all  that  had  been  blown  away  by  the  wind 


AMONG  THE  YAHOOS  329 

of  freedom.  He  was  confirmed  in  his  feeling  that  the 
war  was  an  error,  that  the  German  Government  had  been 
compelled  to  resist  the  encirclement  which  we  had  plotted 
with  France  and  Russia,  to  resist  the  monopoly  of  colonial 
opportunity  which  we  had  established  with  our  confed- 
erates. Obviously  Germany  had  been  fighting  for  her 
national  liberation.  She  had  achieved  it,  and,  with 
thrilling  nobility,  now  she  had  Russia  disrupted  at  her 
feet,  she  was  willing  to  surrender  all  she  had  gained  if 
the  voice  of  the  conquered  people  spoke  against  her. 
The  Reichstag  had  expressed  the  German  people,  mod- 
erate and  magnanimous,  asking  nothing  save  freedom  and 
honour.  Now  Kuhlmann  and  the  German  diplomats 
formally  gave  her  liberty  to  fallen  Russia.  It  warmed 
him.  "  Oh,"  he  murmured,  "  to-day  I  wish  I  were  a 
German." 

It  struck  him  as  marvellous  that  after  all  the  German 
Parliament  had  asserted  its  power.  That  famous  resolu- 
tion of  July,  foregoing  annexations  and  indemnities, 
backed  by  the  German  Government,  denounced  every- 
where as  a  peace  plot,  a  peace  trap,  a  peace  offensive  — 
it  was  honest.  Parliament  did  count  after  all,  in  Ger- 
many. He  remembered  his  Whiggish  horror  when,  some 
months  before,  he  realised  the  impotency  of  the  British 
Parliament:  it  had  not  been  consulted  before  Sir  Edward 
Grey  sent  out  the  ultimatum,  but  was  only  asked  to  vote 
money  for  the  war.  This  was  a  reassertion  of  Par- 
liament. 

This  idea  was  delicious  to  him,  for  Sir  Hugh  believed 
in  Parliament,  though  he  did  not  believe  in  the  people. 
A  member  of  Parliament  was  still  to  him  to  a  degree 
anointed.  Just  then  he  forgot  that  Parliament  was  mainly 
made  up  of  men  of  his  own  class,  and  that  lately  he  had 
hated  his  own  class.  He  had  hated  them  for  their 


330  BLIND  ALLEY 

revengef ulness,  for  their  inability  to  desire  a  better  order ; 
he  had  hated  their  frivolity,  the  abuse  which  had  met 
the  Russian  Revolution  because  it  deprived  us  of  an 
ally;  the  lack  of  any  sympathy  with  the  emancipation 
of  the  Russian  people  from  a  sanguinary  Tsar;  he  had 
hated  the  schoolboy  vapidness  of  the  clubs  where  nobody 
wanted  to  know  whether  the  socialist  State  could  be 
worked  in  practice  —  but  where  men  could  conduct  long 
and  earnest  discussions  as  to  whether  the  right  name  was 
Bolshevik  or  Bolshevist.  He  forgot  all  that;  unable  to 
hate  the  Germans,  he  was  now  even  unable  to  hate  the 
British.  "  All  over,"  he  thought.  "  Such  an  example  of 
renunciation  will  inflame  history ;  Wilson  and  the  Ameri- 
cans, people  who  want  peace  and  justice,  have  at  last 
found  their  ally,  Germany,  against  the  Tariffists, 
Revanchists,  and  company  promoters  of  England  and 
France." 

He  smoked.  He  caressed  Kallikrates,  who  all  that 
evening  was  in  one  of  his  soft  moods,  willing  to  be  turned 
upon  his  back  and  to  be  boneless,  just  warm  flesh  and 
golden  fur  to  crumple,  velvety  gloved  paws  to  be  held. 
He  read  most  of  "  The  Old  Huntsman."  Mr.  Sassoon's 
verse,  often  angry,  often  sweet,  came  to  him  as  from  far 
away.  Yes,  it  was  nearly  over,  the  tragedy  of  the  home- 
coming soldier: 

"  Propped  on  a  stick  he  viewed  the  August  weald; 
Squat  orchard  trees  and  oasts  with  painted  cowls; 
A  homely,  tangled  hedge,  a  corn-stocked  field, 
With  sound  of  -barking  dogs  and  farmyard  fowls. 
And  he'd  come  home  again  to  find  it  more 
Desirable  than  ever  it  was  before. 
How  right  it  seemed  that  he  should  reach  the  span 
Of  comfortable  years  allowed  to  man! 
Splendid  to  eat  and  sleep  and  choose  a  wife, 
Safe  with  his  wound,  a  citizen  of  life. 


AMONG  THE   YAHOOS  331 

He  hobbled  blithely  through  the  garden  gate, 

And  thought:  '  Thank  God,  they  had  to  amputate.' " 

Yes,  no  more  of  that.  And  no  more  ground  for  the 
bitterness  of  "  Base  Details",  which  he  had  found  in  the 
Cambridge  Magazine: 

11  If  I  were  fierce,  and  bald,  and  short  of  breath, 

I'd  live  with  scarlet  majors  at  the  Base 
And  speed  glum  heroes  up  the  line  to  death. 

You'd  see  me  with  my  puffy,  petulant  face, 
Guzzling  and  gulping  in  the  best  hotel, 

Reading  the  Roll  of  Honour.    "  Poor  young  chap," 
I'd  say  — ( I  used  to  know  his  father  well ; 

Yes,  we've  lost  heavily  in  this  last  scrap/ 
And  when  the  war  is  done  and  youth  stone  dead, 

I'd  toddle  safely  home  and  die  —  in  bed." 

It  made  him  laugh  to-night  instead  of  grind  his  teeth. 
And  when  again  he  read  "  Blighters  ",  in  which  Mr.  Sas- 
soon  lashes  himself  into  righteous  fury  at  the  idea  of  the 
people  at  home  in  music-halls,  as  he  read  aloud: 

"  I'd  like  to  see  a  Tank  come  down  the  stalls, 

Lurching  to  rag-time  tunes,  or  '  Home,  Sweet  Home  ', 
And  there 'd  be  no  more  jokes  in  music-halls, 
To  mock  the  riddled  corpses  round  Bapaume." 

Sir  Hugh  thought:  "Yes,  he's  right.  It's  very  beau- 
tiful. We  shall  want  all  that  hate  of  war  to  make  the 
love  of  peace.  But  it's  over.  Lloyd  George  must  state 
his  war  aims  now;  he  can't  get  out  of  it.  And  in  the 
presence  of  what  the  Germans  have  done  at  Brest-Litovsk 
he  won't  be  able  to  demand  anything  but  equal  justice. 
The  war's  over." 

He  was  still  in  that  state  when  he  went  to  bed.  Just 
as  he  began  to  feel  drowsy  there  came  a  knock  at  his 
door  and  Lady  Oakley  came  in.  As  she  switched  on  the 


332  BLIND  ALLEY 

light  and  sat  down  upon  his  bed  he  stared;  never  before 
had  his  wife  come  into  his  bedroom;  her  tradition  was 
to  wait  in  her  own  and  never  lock  her  door.  She  seemed 
conscious  of  it.  Handsome  and  big  in  her  pink  dressing- 
gown,  she  looked  smaller  than  usual. 

"  Hugh,"  she  said  hurriedly,  "  I'm  sorry  to  disturb  you 
—-but  it's  all  so  difficult." 

"  What's  difficult?  "  asked  Sir  Hugh. 

"  Everything.  It's  all  been  so  different  between  us 
this  last  year."  She  looked  so  distressed  that  he  took 
a  plump  hand  which  nervously  grasped  his  own. 

"  Surely  not,  Lena,"  he  said.  "  Of  course,  one  can't 
always  agree.  But  they're  little  things." 

"  No,  no,"  said  Lady  Oakley,  "  they're  not  little  things. 
I  hardly  know  what  I  mean,  but  we  seem  to  think  so 
differently  about  things  now."  Sir  Hugh  was  silent,  and 
she  went  on.  "  It's  as  if  you  thought  me  hard  and  cruel, 
as  if  you  didn't  care  for  me  any  more.  Oh,  yes,  it  is," 
she  went  on  as  he  tried  to  reply.  "  You  say  things  to 
me.  Things  you  wouldn't  have  said  once.  The  other 
day  you  told  me  to  mind  my  own  business  and  that  no 
woman  at  all  and  no  man  over  forty  had  any  right  to 
an  opinion  about  the  war,  because  their  lives  were  not  at 
stake." 

"Well  ..." 

"  Yes,  I  know  what  you  meant.  It's  true  in  a  way, 
though  it's  not:  how  do  you  think  I  feel  about  Stephen 
being  crocked  up?  It's  not  that  .  .  .  it's  pushing  me 
out." 

"  Lena,  dear,"  said  Sir  Hugh,  drawing  her  down.  But 
though  there  was  no  hostility  in  him  there  was  no  warmth. 
Yes,  they  had  whirled  asunder.  He  was  surprised  as  she 
answered  his  movement,  flung  herself  down  upon  him,  so 
that  he  could  feel  her  big  breast  heave.  She  clasped  him 


AMONG  THE  YAHOOS  333 

in  her  arms,  showering  hot  kisses  upon  his  cheeks  and 
lips.  He  did  not  repulse  her,  and  he  ached  as  through 
her  sobs  she  murmured: 

"  Don't  stop  loving  me.  You  must  always  love  me, 
Ug."  He  was  all  pity.  How  long  it  was  since  she  had 
called  him  Ug!  He  kissed  her  gently,  stroked  the  heavy 
hair.  He  did  not  understand  why  suddenly  she  leapt 
up  and,  with  a  hurried  "  good-night",  left  the  room.  He 
was  sweet  and  innocent,  and  so  his  happy  slumber  was 
spared  the  picture  of  the  woman  in  the  next  room,  who 
lay  upon  her  bed,  and  wept,  and  screamed  into  her  pil- 
low, because  she  had  drifted  away  from  her  man,  because 
the  intellectual  gulf  that  lies  between  lovers  could  no 
longer  be  bridged  by  the  kiss  that  inflames.  Half 
through  the  night  she  cried.  She  was  too  old.  There 
was  nothing  left  her  with  which  to  get  him  back. 


BOOK  THREE 
THE  LONE  GREY  COMPANY 


The  war  is  the  world 

(Alan  George) 


BOOK  THREE 

THE  LONE   GREY  COMPANY 
I 

ONLY  after  a  few  days  did  Sir  Hugh  realise  what  had 
happened.  He  was  almost  incredulous  when  precipitated 
from  his  serenities ;  he  bought  newspaper  after  newspaper, 
trying  to  understand  the  drama  of  Brest-Litovsk.  He 
shrank  from  the  screaming  abuse  of  the  newspaper  lead- 
ers, the  pandemonium  of  accusation,  against  the  Germans 
of  treachery,  against  the  Bolsheviks  of  venality,  against 
the  English  pacifists  of  disloyalty.  The  world  was  a  wilder- 
ness of  yahoos,  and  the  horror  of  it  was  that  it  all  seemed 
true.  Only  three  days  after  his  gesture  of  apparent  noble 
abnegation  the  German  had  shown  himself  such  as  he  was 
painted  in  the  blood  press;  he  had  shown  himself  desirous, 
greedy,  crafty,  unfit  for  human  intercourse.  They  were 
right,  then!  Northcliffe  was  right!  Lloyd-George  was 
right !  They  had  been  right  all  along  in  preventing  peace 
before  the  German  was  done.  Hard  upon  the  noble  dec- 
laration of  fair  treatment  for  Russia,  upon  the  gift  of 
freedom  to  the  little  Russian  border  States,  something 
had  happened;  the  jackboot  had  trodden  the  attache 
case  —  unless,  which  seemed  likely,  the  attache  case  had 
been  an  accomplice.  The  Bolsheviks  had  found  that  if 
the  German  accepted  self-determination  for  Courland, 
Poland,  Lithuania,  it  was  because  he  had  already  installed 
into  power  creatures  of  his  own,  who  had  passed  a  sham 


338  BLIND   ALLEY 

vote  in  his  favour.  Trickery!  Always  trickery!  No 
fair  play  could  come  from  the  German. 

Sir  Hugh  was  haunted  also  by  a  terrible  trifle  which  had 
just  occurred  to  him.  Not  only  had  he  been  wrong,  but 
those  people  whom  he  looked  upon  as  blindly  hostile, 
stupid  people,  had  been  right.  Beresford  was  right, 
Maxse,  Kipling,  Curzon  —  all  the  people  whom  he  had 
disliked  for  so  long,  the  people  who  loved  conscription, 
and  who  wouldn't  wait,  all  the  gross  people  who  seemed  to 
hate  art  and  delicate  feeling,  who  went  in  with  the  pred- 
atory capitalist,  the  concessionaire  descending  upon  a 
colony  as  a  vulture,  they  had  been  right.  They  had  been 
right  to  warn  us  that  Germany  was  the  enemy ;  they  had 
rightly  urged  that  we  should  grant  her  no  mercy,  had 
been  right  on  cotton,  on  the  blockade,  on  reprisals.  Sir 
Hugh  thought  it  tragic  that  such  people  should  be  right; 
if  their  minds  alone  could  read  the  mind  of  man,  then 
indeed  the  making  of  mankind  was  a  divine  error. 

He  stood  for  a  long  time  in  Udimore  copse.  The  Jan- 
uary air  was  fresh  and  misty.  The  birches  in  the  mist 
made  monstrous  shapes.  "  This,"  he  felt,  "  is  the  end  of 
all  things.  What's  the  good  of  Lloyd-George  having  de- 
clared his  war  aims  the  other  day?  They're  sound  enough, 
fair  enough.  The  desire  of  the  imperialist  for  more  land, 
for  yet  more  blood-soaked  land,  is  not  too  manifest  in 
his  speech ;  there's  nothing  in  it  to  show  that  we  want  to 
boycott  Germany  forever  and  thus  forever  keep  up  her 
hatred;  we're  not  asking  for  monstrous  indemnities,  but 
only  for  reparation  of  damage;  he  doesn't  seem  ready  to 
force  upon  people  domination  by  the  sword.  I  suppose 
it  means  that  even  our  empire-grubbers  are  affected  by 
new  ideas.  But  what's  the  good?  What's  the  good  of 
Wilson's  speech,  even  though  it  has  nobility?  What  does 
it  matter  if  it  compares  with  Lloyd-George's  as  a  Virgil- 


THE  LONE   GREY  COMPANY     339 

ian  eclogue  compares  with  an  auctioneer's  patter?  I 
like  Wilson's  fourteen  points;  I  really  believe  that  he  does 
want  to  make  an  end  of  these  eternal  chariots  and  horses, 
that  he  does  want  to  disarm  and  create  a  League  of  Na- 
tions. But  can  one  just  man  save  a  doomed  city?  If  we 
can't  trust  the  German,  what  can  we  do  save  slay  him? 
And  at  bottom  we  aren't  much  better.  Oh,  why  can't 
mankind  commit  hara-kiri  and  be  done?  " 

He  came  back  late  in  the  afternoon,  having  walked  a 
long  way  and  eaten  a  bad  lunch  at  Pett.  He  found  his 
family  at  tea,  Stephen  silent,  while  Lady  Oakley  raved 
against  the  food  hoarders  of  Villa-Land,  and  promised 
herself  to  compel  Sir  John  Jesmond  to  have  the  houses 
searched.  It  would  be  a  proud  day  when  she  got  them 
all  fined.  She  passed  on  to  Donnington  Hall  and  to  the 
scandal  of  giving  German  officers  square  meals.  She  was 
very  angry,  having  sent  a  letter  about  Donnington  Hall 
to  a  newspaper,  which  had  returned  it,  stating  that  it 
was  libellous.  Now  she  sat  chewing  buttered  toast,  and 
plotting  for  the  Hun  rations  of  skilly.  "  Give  them  dog 
biscuits;  just  the  thing  for  curs."  Sir  Hugh's  ears  were 
filled  with  the  hysterical  outcry,  suspicions,  fears  of  peace 
traps,  fears  of  Bolo,  who  lurked  in  every  house,  extracting 
precious  information  from  the  boot-boy  at  the  cost  of 
much  German  gold ;  hates  and  revenges,  aimless  demands 
for  air  reprisals,  for  the  hanging  of  submarine  crews,  for 
the  stoppage  of  tobacco  to  German  prisoners.  She  painted 
a  world  of  cruelty,  and  she  did  not  justify  it  by  a  single 
desire  to  make  a  new  world  where  strife  would  be  less, 
war  less  frequent,  justice  more  obvious.  "  Serve  'em 
out,"  and  "  Get  some  of  our  own  back,"  such  was  the 
preface  to  the  new  times.  "  League  of  Nations,"  said 
Lady  Oakley,  "  stuff  and  nonsense."  The  worst  of  it  was 
Sir  Hugh  felt  that  she  was  right.  Stuff  and  nonsense, 


340  BLIND   ALLEY 

blood  and  tears,  that  was  the  history  of  the  world,  past 
and  future. 

After  a  while  Stephen  talked.  He  was  depressed,  for 
the  medical  board  had  that  morning  invalided  him  out. 
He  did  not  want  to  go  back  to  the  army,  but  he  disliked 
being  scrapped.  So  he  talked  rather  bitterly  of  Lans- 
downe  and  Lichnowsky,  poor  old  idealists  who  did  not 
understand  what  thieves'  kitchens  they  lived  in.  The 
only  thing  that  pleased  his  ironic  sense  was  that  the  Brit- 
ish papers  called  Lansdowne  senile  and  that  the  German 
papers  applied  the  same  adjective  to  Lichnowsky.  Evi- 
dently if  one  didn't  like  war,  one  was  senile.  The  only 
thing  that  bothered  him  was  that  every  time  he  met  some- 
body who  was  manifestly  senile,  that  person  simply  wal- 
lowed in  war.  Everybody  liked  the  war  except  the  men 
who  did  the  fighting.  "  After  all,"  he  said,  "  what's  the 
good  of  talking?  It's  so  small,  all  this.  People  kick  up 
no  end  of  a  dust  about  this  war,  as  if  there'd  never  been 
a  war  before.  Somebody  wrote  to  me  while  I  was  out 
there,  just  because  I  asked  for  a  library  list,  one  of  those 
solemn,  lantern- jawed  letters,  asking  me  whether  this 
business  of  literature  and  art  didn't  seem  petty  by  the  side 
of  the  great  issues  which,  etc.,  etc.,  and  didn't  all  that  sort 
of  thing  feel  to  me  like  Lilliput!  I  replied  that  art  and 
literature  last  forever  and  Lilliput's  in  Flanders." 

Nobody  spoke  for  some  time.  It  was  understood  that 
Stephen  must  not  be  irritated.  After  a  while  Stephen 
threw  himself  back  and,  staring  at  the  ceiling,  began  to 
sing  in  a  low  voice: 

"  I  want  to  go  home,  I  want  to  go  home, 
I  don't  want  to  go  to  the  trenches  no  more, 
With  pip-squeaks  and  whizz-bangs  a-bursting  galore. 
I'd  much  sooner  be 
Where  the  Allemand  can't  get  me. 


THE  LONE   GREY   COMPANY     341 

Oh  my!    I  don't  want  to  die. 
I  want  to  go  home." 

The  old  people  looked  at  their  son  fearfully.  What  a 
state  he  was  in !  But  Louise,  who  was  sitting  by  his  side, 
bent  forward  and  with  an  air  of  smiling  irony,  sang  back 
to  him: 

"  Mid  pleasures  and  palaces  though  we  may  roam, 
Be  it  ever  so  humble,  there's  no  place  like  home ! 
A  charm  from  the  skies  seems  to  hallow  us  there, 
Which,  seek  thro'  the  world,  is  ne'er  met  with  elsewhere. 
Home !  home !  sweet,  sweet  home ! 

There's  no  place  like  home!  There's  no  place  like  home!" 

The  young  man  stared,  then  slapped  his  unwounded 
leg  and  laughed: 

"Louise!  you  Victorian  coughdrop!  " 

All  laughed  together,  but  Lady  Oakley,  who  observed 
the  expression  in  their  eyes,  suddenly  stopped  laughing. 
Why  not?  The  girl  would  look  after  him.  Three  years 
his  senior;  yes.  But  that  wouldn't  matter.  A  year  after 
his  wedding  a  man  didn't  know  what  his  wife  looked  like ; 
he  never  looked  at  her. 

Sir  Hugh  went  into  the  study,  picking  up  Kallikrates 
as  he  went.  He  walked  up  and  down,  nursing  the  cat,  who 
grew  rigid,  for  he  resented  having  been  disturbed,  and 
stuck  hard  paws  into  his  master's  breast.  Wearied  by 
the  repulse,  Sir  Hugh  put  him  down.  He  tried  to  read 
"  Bel  Ami",  but  that  day  the  engaging  scoundrel  sick- 
ened him. 

II 

"  KEEPING  well?  "  said  Port. 

"  So-so,"  replied  Keele.  "  I  get  a  bit  of  a  twisty  pain 
these  wet  mornings." 


342  BLIND  ALLEY 

"  Ah!  what  are  you  doing  about  pigs?  " 

"  I'm  thinking  of  giving  up  Gloucesters.  You  tried 
Middle  White?  " 

"  Yes,  fine  pig,  Middle  White,  fine  pig.  Only  there's 
feeding.  What  d'you  expect  to  get  out  of  four  pounds  of 
cake  a  day  for  a  breeding  sow?  " 

"  Can't  be  done,"  said  Keele.  "  I'm  turning  mine  out; 
I've  got  half  a  dozen  young  gilts  out  now.  They  pick  up 
a  bit,  grass  and  acorns.  They're  due  to  pig  down  in 
March." 

"  Ah,  well,"  said  Port.  "  Bacon  fetches  good  prices 
now.  Things  might  be  worse." 

Ill 

"  ANGUS/'  said  Sir  Hugh,  "  I  don't  much  like  this  new 
idea  of  ministers  writing  articles  in  the  papers.  Here's 
Sir  Frederick  Smith  in  the  Evening  Standard,  and  Clynes 
in  the  Weekly  Dispatch,  and  I  seem  to  have  seen  an  ar- 
ticle by  Hodge." 

"  New  times,  new  times,"  said  Sir  Angus  (who  had  just 
been  made  a  K  B.  E.),  "you  mustn't  turn  into  an  old 
fogey.  To-day  everything's  hustle.  WTe  want  zip." 

"  Zip !  "  said  Sir  Hugh.  "  The  very  word  makes  me 
sick.  Did  Pijtt  have  zip?  I  suppose  Disraeli  had  zip? 
A  cabinet  minister  ought  to  have  dignity." 

"  Dignity  be  damned !  "  said  Sir  Angus.  "  We  don't 
want  any  dignity,  especially  in  business,  whatever  H.  E. 
Morgan  may  say.  Your  ideal  cabinet  minister,  Hugh,  is 
a  sort  of  waxwork  at  Madame  Tussaud's." 

"  Well,  your  sort  is  a  vote-in-the-slot  machine." 

"  Anyhow,  the  new  politician  is  right  there  with  the 
goods,"  said  Sir  Angus,  who  was  cultivating  American- 
isms. "  Your  fungus-grown  politician  was  all  right  in  the 


THE   LONE   GREY   COMPANY     343 

old  days,  but  in  this  war  it's  up  to  him  to  get  a  move  on. 
Zip,  my  boy,  zip." 

"  I  suppose/'  said  Sir  Hugh,  "  that  Hertling  has  what 
you  call  zip  when  he  proposes  to  hold  on  to  Belgium  until 
we  get  out  of  Malta  and  Gib.  I  suppose  Italy  is  exhib- 
iting zip.  Have  you  read  the  Manchester  Guardian?  " 

"  No.    You  don't  think  I  read  pacifist  papers?  " 

"  If  you  read  pacifist  papers  and  gave  up  the  drug 
habit,  as  represented  by  the  other  papers,  you'd  know 
that  the  Italian  secret  treaty  was  made  in  April,  '15,  just 
before  they  refused  to  be  bought  off  by  Austria  because 
they'd  been  bought  in  by  us.  No  bones  about  it;  they 
aren't  only  to  have  the  Trentino  and  the  other  places 
where  their  beloved  brethren  had  been  suffering  for  thirty 
years  at  the  hands  of  their  own  ally.  They're  to  have 
most  of  the  Dalmatian  coast,  because  it  was  Roman  in  the 
year  dot,  and  a  share  of  the  booty  in  Asia  Minor;  no 
damned  self-determination  for  the  Greeks.  Grab  all  you 
can.  No  coast  for  Austria:  bottle  her  up,  and  learn 
nothing  from  the  example  of  Serbia  who's  made  three 
wars  so  far  because  we  bottled  her  up.  Shove,  grab, 
don't  have  principles,  they  get  in  the  way." 

Sir  Angus  laughed  at  him.  When  at  last  they  parted 
Sir  Angus  summed  up  the  philosophy  of  the  day:  "  Say 
what  you  like;  we've  got  to  win  this  war  and  damn  the 
consequences."  Sir  Hugh  remembered  Lord  Milner's 
phrase:  the  consequences  had  been  most  unpleasant.  He 
walked  to  Trafalgar  Square,  observing  with  a  certain  dis- 
taste the  appeals  to  an  imperial  people:  "Come  and 
buy  war  bonds  at  the  bank";  "A  hundred  and  twenty- 
four  cartridges  for  15s  6d."  Against  the  front  of  the 
National  Gallery,  above  the  tank  and  the  crowds  that 
squeezed  in  between  the  captured  German  guns,  was  the 
most  displeasing  of  boards:  a  list  of  the  purchasing  per- 


344  BLIND  ALLEY 

formances  of  provincial  towns,  with  Glasgow  arrogant  at 
the  top,  and  envious  Birmingham  yapping  below.  "  Don't 
come  and  save  the  country,"  thought  Sir  Hugh  angrily. 
"  No,  that  wouldn't  appeal  to  you,  John  Citizen.  Come 
and  lick  Glasgow;  that's  more  like  it.  Don't  work  to- 
gether; work  against  one  another.  Hate  and  rivalry  are 
the  rule  of  the  world;  let's  get  Manchester  to  hate  Cardiff, 
and  they'll  put  their  money  down  to  humiliate  each  other, 
pay  up  for  local  hatred,  but  not  for  love  of  England." 
And  yet,  all  through  his.  protest  ran  the  insistent  feeling 
that  he  had  been  wrong  so  far,  that  Lord  Northcliffe  and 
Lord  Beaverbrook  alone  had  understood  the  need  of  the 
day.  He  could  not  yet  love  them;  but  he  could  respect 
them. 

He  found  Sylvia  alone,  and  rather  depressed  in  her 
flat.  The  decree  nisi  had  been  pronounced  two  days  be- 
fore. "  How  are  you?  "  asked  Sir  Hugh. 

"  Pretty  well,  rather  lonely.  Of  course  I  can't  show 
myself  just  now." 

"  Why  don't  you  come  down  to  Knapenden  for  a 
while?  " 

"  You  know  quite  well  mother  doesn't  want  me.  Be- 
sides, Oliver  may  be  coming  back  on  leave." 

"  Oh,  yes,"  said  Sir  Hugh,  embarrassed.  He  supposed 
he  must  acknowledge  March.  Seemed  strange  that  the 
boy  was  in  a  way  Sylvia's  husband.  He  felt  that  he 
must  acknowledge  him  formally. 

"  Sylvia,"  he  said,  "  now  it's  all  over  you're  not  sorry?  " 

"  Oh,  I  don't  know.     It's  all  very  dull." 

She  complained  of  social  exclusion.  March  wrote 
every  day,  but,  of  course,  one  wanted  to  go  about  and  all 
that.  She  looked  beautiful,  but  discontented,  and  Sir 
Hugh  grew  more  assured  that  she  did  not  love  the  young 
man.  Then  her  state  would  be  worse  than  her  former 


THE  LONE   GREY  COMPANY     345 

one.  He  shrank  from  such  exposures,  and  found  a  ma- 
terial question  to  raise. 

"  Of  course  until  you  marry  we'll  have  to  make  you  an 
allowance." 

"  Oh,  you  needn't.  Andy's  paying  eight  hundred  a 
year  until  the  decree  is  made  absolute." 

"  What?  "  cried  Sir  Hugh.  He  was  furious.  Not  with 
Jervaulx,  who  sinned  only  by  generosity,  but  with  Sylvia, 
who  accepted  his  money.  She  should  not  take  it.  He 
forbade  it.  Not  a  penny  should  she  take  from  Jervaulx. 
Had  she  no  pride?  no  dignity? 

"  Well,"  said  Sylvia,  exasperated,  "  he's  got  to  make  me 
an  allowance.  The  solicitor  says  it's  the  law."  They 
had  a  long,  harsh  wrangle.  Sylvia  wanted  to  keep  the 
allowance,  because  money  from  Andy  carried  no  control, 
while  money  from  her  father  gave  him  rights  of  censure. 

"  I  won't  have  it,"  he  said,  again  and  again.  "  I  won't 
have  it.  D'you  understand?  Where's  his  last  cheque? 
It  must  be  returned  at  once." 

"  It  can't  be  returned,"  said  Sylvia,  beginning  to  cry. 
"  It's  paid  direct  into  my  bank  every  month." 

"  Write  to  your  banker  at  once  telling  him  to  return  it. 
And  tell  him  to  inform  me  how  much  he's  received  in 
these  four  months,  so  that  I  may  pay  it  back.  Give  me 
the  letter,  I'lJ  post  it." 

After  a  long  scene  the  letter  was  written.  Then  Sylvia 
flung  down  the  pen  and  stamped:  "  You're  all  against  me. 
You  all  want  to  kick  me  when  I'm  down.  I  hate  you.  I 
hate  you." 

"  So  do  I,"  shouted  Sir  Hugh,  and  slammed  the  door 
behind  him. 

A  few  minutes  later,  in  Baker  Street,  he  felt  remorseful. 
So  he  sent  by  a  messenger  boy  an  enormous  bunch  of 
Parma  violets  and  a  note:  "  Sylvia,  dear,  your  father  has 


346  BLIND  ALLEY 

the  pride  of  age  and  the  temper  of  youth.  He  asks  par- 
don of  his  beautiful  daughter,  and  hopes  that  when  next 
she  comes  to  cheer  his  waning  years,  she  will  bring  for- 
giveness in  her  eyes  of  amber." 

IV 

> 

IF  Sir  Hugh  was  simple  for  a  human  being,  Lady  Oak- 
ley was  still  simpler  for  a  woman.  She  had  never  finessed 
a  queen  in  her  life.  She  loved  her  son,  she  was  anxious 
not  to  thrust  irritating  ideas  upon  him,  and  yet  she  always 
irritated  him.  Sometimes  she  asked  herself  why  the 
Stephen  of  1918  was  so  different  from  the  Stephen  of  1914, 
and  still  more  from  the  boisterous  boy  who  used  to  write 
her  long  letters  from  school  and  beg  to  be  taken  when  she 
went  into  Hastings  to  shop.  "  It's  war,"  she  reflected 
gloomily.  "  His  wound  and  all  that."  Yet  she  knew  that 
it  was  not  only  his  wound ;  it  was  something  she  could  not 
get  hold  of,  a  mental  difference,  rather  similar  to  the. one 
which  had  arisen  between  her ,  and  her  husband  —  they 
seemed  so  wrong-headed,  both  of  them.  It  never  struck 
her  that  they  should  be  let. alone;  it  did  not  occur  to  her 
that  they  might  differ  from  her  politically.  When  there 
was  an  argument,  such  as  the  night  before,  when  Stephen 
had  referred  to  Carson's  last  speech  as  a  steady  bellow, 
and  declared  that  he  was  preparing  a  song  called  "  The 
Carson  Ragtime",  to  which  the  chorus  would  be:  "  Stick 
it  out,  stick  it  out",  and  when  Sir  Hugh  added  that  now- 
adays sticking  it  out  was  a  virtue  which  was  its  own 
reward,  Lady  Oakley  thought  they  were  being  merely  irri- 
tating. 

That  day,  thinking  herself  rather  artful,  as  is  the  way 
of  the  simple,  she  decided  to  influence  Stephen  towards  a 
marriage  with  Louise.  She  was  clumsy  enough  to  begin 


THE   LONE   GREY   COMPANY     347 

by  talking  of  the  news  of  the  day.  ("  I  mustn't  show  my 
hand,"  she  thought.)  She  talked  of  the  Versailles  Confer- 
ence, congratulated  herself  on  the  formation  at  last  of  a 
strong  allied  body  which  would  soon  make  an  end  of  the 
kid-gloved  methods  of  this  weak-kneed  government.  She 
went  on  to  rejoice  over  the  dismissal  of  Sir  William  Rob- 
ertson, Lord  Jellicoe,  and  General  Trenchard.  She  did 
not  realise  that  as  she  talked,  and  as  Stephen  smoked,  his 
inner  self  was  grinning  at  her  maliciously,  and  saying: 
"  Go  on!  sack  'em  all,  smash  'em  all,  tie  'em  down.  Let's 
have  more  cabals  in  the  newspapers,  more  self-advertise- 
ments of  Lloyd-George's.  Go  on.  Get  some  new  brooms 
in.  You'll  soon  wear  'em  out;  and  then  down  with  'em, 
out  with  'em,  serve  'em  out  in  the  name  of  fair  dealing." 

Lady  Oakley  took  his  silence  for  an  evidence  of  con- 
version. As  an  amusing  tidbit  of  information  she  told 
him  that  the  day  before,  when  she  went  into  the  chemist's 
shop  at  Hastings,  where  she  sometimes  dealt,  she  had  had 
the  privilege  of  ordering  out  an  old  naturalised  German 
watchmaker  who  used  to  wind  their  clocks.  He  slunk  out, 
she  said,  like  a  beaten  cur.  "  I  can't  understand  it,"  she 
added.  "  The  chemist  said  that  he'd  had  the  German  as 
a  friend  for  twenty  years.  I  told  him  he  ought  to  be 
ashamed  of  himself.  He  talked  some  nonsense  about 
the  man  having  been  ruined  by  the  war.  Ruined!  He 
ought  to  be  cut  into  little  pieces.  Of  course,  I'll  never 
go  into  the  shop  again." 

"  Serve  them  out,"  said  Stephen's  inner  self.  "  That's 
the  way  to  prepare  the  new  times,  the  times  of  freedom 
and  universal  good  will.  Go  on!  Grind  their  faces,  jump 
on  the  individual  if  you  can't  down  the  nation.  That's 
the  way  to  make  them  friendly  and  establish  the  reign  of 
peace  in  the  world." 

Lady  Oakley  went  on  to  talk  of  air  raids,  and  the  need 


348  BLIND  ALLEY 

for  the  establishment  of  German  prisoner  camps  in  the 
raid  areas. 

"  Tie  'em  up,  string  'em  up,"  murmured  Stephen's 
double.  "  They're  prisoners,  you've  got  'em  in  your 
power.  Show  your  capacity  for  mercy.  Show  your  su- 
periority over  the  Hun  by  irritating  him.  Go  on!  prove 
your  doctrine  orthodox  by  apostolic  blows  and  knocks." 

Then  she  asked  him  what  he  had  decided  as  to  his 
career. 

"  Oh,  I  dunno,"  said  Stephen.  "  I've  talked  to  father 
about  going  into  the  Bank.  It's  either  that  or  politics, 
but  I'm  afraid  you  wouldn't  like  my  politics." 

"  Oh,"  said  Lady  Oakley,  ignoring  the  part  which  did 
not  interest  her.  "  Yes,  your  father  did  say  something 
to  me  about  your  going  into  the  Bank.  Are  you  sure 
you'd  like  that?  " 

"  Haven't  any  option.  I'm  too  old  for  a  respectable 
occupation,  such  as  the  Bar,  or  the  diplomatic,  or  such- 
like forms  of  public-spirited  self-advancement." 

"  Nonsense,"  said  Lady  Oakley,  "  but  still  if  you  pre- 
fer the  Bank,  I  don't  see  why  you  shouldn't  go  into  it.  It 
would  be  better  in  a  way.  You'd  be  in  a  position  to 
marry  pretty  soon,  if  you  wanted  to."  Stephen  did  not 
reply,  and  Lady  Oakley,  unable  to  hold  a  trump,  added 
as  casually  as  she  could:  "  I  suppose  you  miss  Louise 
now." 

"  It  might  be  rather  fun  making  money,"  said  Stephen, 
as  if  he  had  not  heard  the  allusion. 

Lady  Oakley  was  embarrassed.  Her  son  puzzled  her. 
She  realised  vaguely  that  he  had  aged  during  the  war, 
and  yet  that  he  was  very  raw.  She  wondered  how  the 
inexperienced  old-young  man  would  navigate  the  seas  of 
finance  and  of  love. 

Then  Stephen  said  suddenly:  "  Louise  is  a  good  sort," 


THE   LONE  GREY  COMPANY     349 

and  stumped  out.    A  few  minutes  later  she  saw  him 
walking  his  horse  down  the  lime  avenue. 

Stephen's  meditations  did  not  at  once  fasten  on  Louise. 
He  still  had  to  rid  himself  of  maternally  induced  irrita- 
tions. The  events  of  the  war  were  significant  to  him; 
they  were  not  just  battles  and  dates,  but  a  diagram  of  the 
world  mind.  A  chaotic  diagram.  Too  many  things  hap- 
pened; the  political  flavour  of  the  period  was  nasty  to  his 
palate.  He  had  no  love  for  people  like  Robertson  and 
Jellicoe,  for  he  hated  all  brass  hats,  nor  for  financiers, 
like  Cowdray,  only  he  did  not  like  the  way  in  which  these 
people  were  first  of  all  deprived  of  their  public  credit  by 
campaigns  in  the  newspapers,  by  untrue  statements  that 
they  had  resigned,  and  then  suddenly  dismissed  without 
a  hearing.  To  his  hard  mind,  either  we  were  convicted  as 
fools  for  having  stood  them  for  forty  years  or  the  whole 
show  was  being  run  by  a  press  ramp.  All  Oakleys  rather 
disliked  the  press.  They  did  not  understand  the  new 
politics.  Stephen  was  intelligent  enough  to  see  that  the 
new  politics  fitted  the  new  public,  that  the  Daily  Mail 
and  the  yellow  press  generally  were  educating  millions  of 
people  who  but  for  them  would  read  nothing  at  all.  But 
all  Oakleys  hated  loud  publicity.  Thus  Stephen  was 
shocked  by  Clemenceau's  exposure  of  the  Austrian  Em- 
peror's peace  offer.  It  was  a  private  offer,  made  under 
strict  conditions  of  secrecy,  but  we  had  broken  our  word, 
shown  the  letter  to  odd  people,  and  kept  President  Wil- 
son in  the  dark  —  perhaps  because  we  were  afraid  he 
might  act  on  it.  And  now  once  more  we  were  playing  a 
foul  game:  we  were  advertising  this  secret  offer  in  the 
newspapers.  Not  only  were  we  not  playing  the  game, 
but  this  was  part  of  the  new,  vulgar  way  of  doing  things, 
the  noisy,  yapping  way  of  the  underbred,  the  "  yah!  take 
that!  "  way.  "  Guttersnipes  in  office,"  thought  Stephen, 


350  BLIND  ALLEY 

and  as  his  horse  trotted  over  the  moist  turf,  he  thought 
still  more  bitterly  that  the  guttersnipes  were  more  effect- 
ive in  action  than  the  men  of  a  finer  breed.  "  I  suppose 
we're  effete.  But  God  help  New  England." 

He  stopped  for  a  moment  at  Ascalon  Farm  to  talk  to 
Hart.  The  farmer  was  in  a  violent  mood  because  the 
local  labourers  had  formed  a  trade-union  branch. 

"  We'll  have  'em  striking  next,"  he  growled.  "  Same  as 
on  the  Clyde.  Ought  to  shoot  a  few  of  'em." 

"  What  are  they  going  to  strike  for?  "  asked  Stephen. 

"  They  don't  know  themselves.  They're  getting  more 
wages  than  ever  they've  had.  They  just  strike  for  a  bit 
of  a  change,  or  because  an  agitator  comes  down  and  tells 
'em  the  tale." 

Stephen  said  nothing.  The  explanation  seemed  insuf- 
ficient. Surely  men  wouldn't  leave  their  work  and  live 
on  strike  pay,  or  starve,  without  a  grievance,  just  because 
an  agitator  talked.  One  heard  too  much  about  agitators ; 
agitators  could  not  seduce,  they  could  only  give  a  voice 
to  a  grievance.  He  smiled  as  he  thought  of  agitators 
fomenting  a  strike  on  the  Stock  Exchange,  of  the  Bishop 
of  London  bringing  off  a  successful  agitation  among 
Christians.  As  he  did  not  want  to  discuss  generalities,  he 
congratulated  Molly  on  her  approaching  marriage.  Hart 
was  a  little  shamefaced,  for  he  assumed  that  Stephen's 
attitude  was  the  same  as  Lady  Oakley's. 

"  I  don't  hold  with  conscientious  objectors  myself,"  he 
said.  "  Still  it's  my  gal's  going  to  marry  him,  not  me." 

As  Stephen  went  across  the  marsh,  he  thought  less  in 
general  and  more  of 'himself,  as  if  milk-white  Molly  had 
turned  his  mind  to  human  beings.  He  felt  rather  lonely. 
His  father  was  very  little  in  the  house,  and  strangely  de- 
pressed; his  mother  adored  him,  but  she  was  war-mad, 
as  if  she  were  the  victim  of  a  religious  revival,  of  a  war 


THE  LONE  GREY  COMPANY  351 

religion  comprising  the  fine,  manly  faith  of  Mr.  Bottom- 
ley,  the  revengefulness  of  Mr.  Raemakers,  and  the  pure 
stucco  of  Mr.  Ian  Hay  —  clean  living  and  no  damned 
thinking.  Monica  was  no  good  either;  since  she  had 
come  back  from  Rochester  she  moved  in  a  mechanical 
dream,  doing  silly  jobs  in  pen  and  ink  for  her  mother  and 
father,  and  making  endless,  ill-fitting  garments  for  Brit- 
ish prisoners  who'd  done  her  no  harm.  Louise  was  the 
only  good  spot.  After  a  row  with  one's  mother,  when 
one's  mother  had  been  raving  against  Huns,  and  Russians, 
and  Poles,  and  everybody  else,  and  asking  the  Home 
Office  to  have  them  driven  out  of  Brighton  and  Maiden- 
head into  the  raid  areas,  so  as  to  jolly  well  learn  'em  to 
be  foreigners,  one  could  always  go  to  Louise.  Louise  was 
the  only  creature  he  knew  who  lived  above  the  battle. 
White  and  eternal,  always  soft,  always  smiling,  never 
harsh,  never  noisy,  demanding  and  giving  little,  just 
beautifully  being,  as  Henry  James  said.  His  mind  took 
a  turn.  "  I'm  fed  up,"  he  thought.  "  I'll  go  to  a  place 
where  they're  neutral.  No  good;  neutrals  are  bound  to 
be  still  more  patriotic  than  we  are;  they  don't  risk  any- 
thing. No,  what  I  need  is  an  agnostic  monastery."  He 
smiled,  and  soothed  by  the  steady  amble  of  his  horse,  he 
thought  again  of  Louise.  "  She's  like  candlelight,"  he 
thought.  "  The  only  light  that  doesn't  hurt  the  eyes." 


"MONICA,"  said  Sir  Hugh,  "  don't  you  think  it's  dread- 
ful that  we  should  be  out  here  again  seeing  the  lambs?  " 

"Why?"  asked  the  girl,  surprised;  "don't  you  think 
they're  sweet?  " 

"  Yes  —  they're  like  toys  —  but  we  came  out  here  last 
year,  you  and  I,  and  the  year  before,  and  all  the  years 


352  BLIND  ALLEY 

before,  right  down  to  the  time  when  you  were  as  tottery 
on  your  legs  as  those  woolly  lambs.  It  goes  on  forever. 
For  nothing.  Lambs  turn  into  sheep,  and  sheep  into  mut- 
ton, just  as  boys  turn  into  men,  and  men  into  soldiers. 
One  ends  as  cannon  fodder,  and  the  other  as  shepherd's 
pie." 

"  Don't,"  murmured  Monica.  "  I  think  you're  horrid. 
Why  will  you  always  look  at  things  like  that?  Why 
can't  you  be  glad  that  it's  spring  again,  that  everything 
round  you  is  getting  green  and  smelling  sweet?  " 

"  In  April  even  graveyards  smell  sweet." 

"  But,  father,  is  there  no  joy  of  life  for  you?  You  didn't 
always  talk  like  this.  You  used  to  be  glad  when  the 
spring  came.  You  used  to  say  that  whenever  the  world 
came  alive  again,  so  did  you." 

Sir  Hugh  laughed.  "  Ah,  yes,  those  were  the  days  of 
spring  onions,  these  are  the  days  of  spring  offensives. 
What's  the  good  of  all  this,  coming  up  only  to  die? 
What's  the  use  of  mother  muddlepate,  Nature,  as  they 
call  her,  breeding  and  breeding,  only  to  kill?  " 

Monica  did  not  reply  for  a  moment,  then  said  in  a 
shaky  voice:  "  You're  horrid,  father,  horrid,  like  the  rest. 
Stephen's  horrid,  full  of  sneers.  Yesterday  he  was  laugh- 
ing at  a  man  in  his  battalion;  he  was  an  actor,  and  his 
name  was  Hubert  Diss.  As  he  didn't  think  Diss  a  good 
name  he  called  himself  Arundel.  When  he  went  into  the 
army  he  had  to  be  Private  Diss,  and  Stephen  said  he  used 
to  brag  about  the  fine  restoration  of  his  simplicity. 
Well,  he  got  hit  and  was  discharged.  During  his  con- 
valescence he  got  an  engagement  and  called  himself  Diss- 
Arundel.  Now  he's  got  a  part  in  London,  and  Stephen 
says  Diss  is  dead,  while  Arundel  has  risen.  This,  he 
says,  is  the  fine  restoration  of  sophistication.  That's  all 
the  war  has  done  for  Diss,  he  says,  that's  all  it's  done  for 


THE  LONE   GREY  COMPANY     353 

everything.  I  think  it's  hateful;  you  take  all  the  cour- 
age out  of  us.  How  can  one  believe  in  the  war  if  one 
doesn't  think  it  makes  people  finer?  " 

"  Why  believe  in  it?  "  said  Sir  Hugh. 

"  Don't,"  cried  Monica,  in  a  tone  which  puzzled  him. 
"  Some  one  —  I  was  told  that  the  war  has  brought  the 
world  to  a  blind  alley  —  oh,  don't  take  things  away  from 
me.  I  must  believe  in  it,  unless  you  can  give  me  some- 
thing else  to  believe  in." 

"  Monica,  dear,"  said  Sir  Hugh,  taking  her  arm,  "  don't 
force  yourself  to  believe  in  things  you  don't  believe  in. 
The  war's  here,  so  is  smallpox;  we  must  get  rid  of  both 
of  them.  Yes,  you're  right.  The  world's  in  a  blind  alley. 
And  we  shan't  get  it  out,  get  rid  of  war,  I  mean,  for  ever, 
unless  we  understand  the  war,  unless  we  realise  that  it 
was  engineered  in  the  interests  of  separate  nationalities 
and  that  so  long  as  sharp  national  differences  are  kept 
up,  so  long  will  war  continue  to  break  out.  Oh,  I  know 
you  can  make  a  case  just  as  the  Germans  can;  just  as 
the  devil  is  sometimes  a  logician.  But  one  can  make  a 
better  case  out  of  lies,  says  Anatole  France,  than  out 
of  the  truth,  because  lies  are  made  to  fit  the  case.  I 
wonder  how  you  can  be  taken  in,  Monica,  by  all  this 
jingo  talk.  I  used  to  think  you  women  had  a  brain, 
perhaps  not  exactly  a  brain,  but  shall  we  say  a  sub- 
stitute." 

"  Thank  you,  father,"  said  Monica,  smiling,  "  I  like 
your  masculine  arrogance;  let  me  tell  you  that  women 
do  quite  as  well  with  their  mental  margarine  as  you  men 
with  your  intellectual  butter." 

"  Sorry,  didn't  mean  to  be  rude.  Only  you  women  let 
such  passion  into  your  politics.  You  believe  anything, 
even  the  newspapers.  And  you  never  get  inside  the 


354  BLIND   ALLEY 

"  Well,  I  know  all  about  the  German  offensive." 
"  Oh,  never  mind  the  German  offensive.  Whether  they 
get  through  or  not,  and  whether  or  not  we  get  licked,  all 
that  won't  change  the  only  thing  that  matters :  the  results 
of  the  offensive  of  ambition  and  greed  against  the  crum- 
bling front  of  human  decency.  Look  at  the  world  we're 
living  in.  Here  are  the  Germans,  after  advertising  every- 
where their  offer  of  liberty  to  all  the  subject  races,  their 
desire  to  take  from  their  enemy  only  reparation  for  actual 
damage,  making  last  week  with  the  Bolsheviks  a  treaty 
which  hands  over  to  Germany  a  territory  larger  than  this 
country,  where  they  will  doubtless  see  to  it  that  German 
bayonets  persuade  the  people  to  vote  for  German  rule. 
They  don't  want  a  penny,  and  they  take  three  hundred 
millions  in  gold  from  that  unhappy  country.  They  don't 
want  any  unfair  advantages,  and  they  force  Russia  to 
mortgage  her  timber,  her  metals,  to  keep  her  frontiers 
open  to  German  goods.  And  they  give  liberty  to  Ukraine 

—  retaining  the  right  to  police  it." 

"  That's  just  like  the  Germans,"  said  Monica. 

"  Alas !  It  is  also  like  us.  We  had  the  right  to  police 
Egypt,  and  before  1914  was  over  we  bagged  it.  We  all 
do  the  same.  Here  are  the  Germans  snatching,  snatch- 
ing all  the  Roumanian  coast,  and  offering  as  compen- 
sation Russian  lands  which  don't  belong  to  them.  We're 
just  the  same.  The  Foreign  Office  assures  Miss  Durham 
this  month  that  they  have  full  sympathy  with  Albania  — 
and  doesn't  say  that  three  years  ago,  by  our  secret  treaty 
with  Italy,  we  reserved  the  right  to  cut  up  Albania,  and 
share  her  out  between  our  Allies.  Three  or  four  months 
ago  Wilson  said  that  we  did  not  want  to  break  up  Austria 

—  we  let  him  say  that  without  telling  him  that  we  had 
secret  treaties  giving  Italy  German  land  in  the  Tyrol, 
Slav  land  on  the  coast;  a  secret  treaty  with  Roumania 


THE  LONE   GREY   COMPANY     355 

giving  her  thousands  of  miles  of  Magyar  land.  Lord 
Robert  Cecil  said  we  wanted  no  conquests,  Asquith  said 
we  wanted  nothing  but  freedom  —  and  we  see  the  Rus- 
sian foreign  minister  writing  to  the  Russian  ambassador 
three  years  ago  that  we  asked  for  their  benevolent  atti- 
tude towards  our  political  aspirations :  following  on  which 
we  bagged  the  neutral  zone  in  Persia.  Grab  and  grab. 
There  isn't  a  nation  in  Europe  which  ought  not  to  have 
upon  its  coat-of-arms  an  open  maw  snappant." 

After  a  moment  he  went  on  again.  "  I  shouldn't  mind 
it  so  much  if  there  weren't  such  a  lot  of  cant,  if  we  applied 
the  same  rule  to  our  enemies  and  ourselves.  The  Ger- 
mans enter  Ukraine  '  to  restore  order '  and  we  yell ;  on 
the  other  hand  all  our  papers  demand  a  Japanese  invasion 
of  Russia,  '  to  restore  order ',  and  we  cheer.  Am  I  to 
believe  that  Japan  has  no  imperial  ambitions,  that  her 
war  with  China  and  its  resultant  conquests,  her  war  with 
Russia  and  its  resultant  conquests,  were  forced  on  her 
reluctant  government  for  self-defense?  It's  always  ex- 
asperated nationality  claiming  historic  rights.  And  in 
the  matter  of  nationality,  the  most  stupid  invention  of 
mankind,  lies  and  cynicism,  are  allowed.  It's  everywhere 
the  same.  It's  all  right  that  Alsace-Lorraine  should  be 
returned  in  virtue  of  a  self-determination  so  implicit  that 
she  isn't  to  be  allowed  to  vote,  but  it's  not  all  right  that 
Turkey  should  recover  Kars  and  Batum  which  Russia 
took  from  her  in  1878.  Oh !  I'd  rather  be  a  decent  high- 
wayman than  an  attache  in  a  chancellery.  And  it  all 
goes  on.  The  people  can  do  nothing  to  stop  it.  They're 
drugged  with  a  continual  hymn  of  hate.  Hate  is  the 
strong  wine  with  which  we  drug  them ;  in  this,  the  fourth 
year  of  war,  our  newspapers  fill  their  columns  with  old 
stories  of  atrocities,  and  we  publish  '  Murder  Most  Foul ', 
a  pandemonium  of  horrors  fit  to  make  the  people  hate 


356  BLIND  ALLEY 

their  enemy,  and  therefore  to  fight  him.  We're  afraid 
they'd  stop  fighting  if  they  didn't  hate.  We're  never 
afraid  of  anything  except  of  love." 

It  was  evident  that  Monica's  mind  had  fastened  only 
on  the  last  word,  for  she  said:  "  Love  is  quite  as  cruel 
as  hate,  father.  It  may  hurt  one  more." 

Sir  Hugh,  after  a  moment,  understood  that  she  was 
speaking  personally.  He  knew  something  had  happened 
in  the  last  year,  but  though  he  was  a  father  he  still  prac- 
tised tact.  "Yes,  I  know,  but  the  pains  of  love  leave 
nobility  behind." 

"  I  wonder  what  you  would  say,  father,  if  I  told  you 
that  I  had  .  .  .  Oh,  I  can't  tell  you.  One  ought  not 
to  love  people  one  can't  marry." 

"  No,"  said  Sir  Hugh,  very  uncomfortable. 

"  Only  it's  so  difficult.  Mr.  Hurn  writes  to  me  from 
time  to  time." 

"  Do  you  like  him?  "  asked  Sir  Hugh,  rather  confused, 
for  Hurn  was  a  bachelor. 

"  Yes,  only  he's  so  queer  now.  The  war  seems  to  have 
upset  him;  he's  so  grave  and  religious;  so  excited.  It's 
as  if  the  war'd  spoiled  people." 

"Yes,  it  spoils  us  all.  I'm  afraid  it's  spoiled  some- 
thing in  you,  my  dear,  smashed  some  dreams  of  yours." 

"  Dreams  are  the  stuff  that  worlds  are  made  of," 
quoted  Monica,  and  her  voice  shook  as  she  remembered. 

Sir  Hugh  did  not  reply  for  some  time,  for  that  phrase 
pleased  him.  Then,  irrelevantly,  he  said:  "Won't  you 
tell  me?  " 

"  Father  —  there  was  somebody,  and  I  thought  I  cared 
for  him,  and  he  for  me  —  we  couldn't  marry.  He's  mar- 
ried. It's  all  right;  time  will  put  it  right  ..."  With 
a  wry  mouth  she  searched  for  her  handkerchief ;  her  hands 
trembled.  Sir  Hugh  took  her  into  his  arms  and  there 


THE  LONE   GREY   COMPANYj    357 

let  her  stay  for  a  long  time,  asking  of  her  no  more  than 
she  would  tell,  and  gently  caressing  the  bent  brown  head. 

VI 

THE  "  King's  Arms  "  was  almost  empty  that  April 
evening,  for  it  was  a  Thursday,  and  the  young  men, 
rather  short  of  money,  preferred  the  diversions  of  the 
spring  and  were  loafing  with  the  girls  in  the  lanes.  Also 
there  was  a  hint  of  late  frost  in  the  air,  and  the  older 
men  were  getting  in  the  lambs.  Mr.  Cashel  stood  behind 
the  bar,  as  ever  polishing  a  tumbler,  talking  in  a  low 
voice  to  Farcet.  At  the  long  table  sat  only  Hart  and  a 
stranger  face  to  face,  watched  from  the  other  table  by 
Keele,  who  pretended  to  smoke,  but  listened. 

"  Make  it  eighty-eight  pounds  ten/'  said  Hart,  "  and 
the  stack's  yours." 

"  Can't  be  done.  Eighty-six  pound's  all  it's  worth  to 
me." 

"  Now,  Mr.  Brough,  you  know  that  timber'd  fetch 
ninety-five  pound  any  day  if  I  was  to  cart  it  over  to 
Hastings.  They're  just  squalling  for  timber  for  fishing 
smacks,  what  with  the  price  of  fish  and  what  with  U-boats 
sinking  'em." 

"  No  good  to  me,"  said  Brough.  He  was  a  big  farmer 
from  the  other  side  of  Rye.  A  stocky,  broad-faced  man, 
he  had  sly  eyes,  and  though  his  price  was  fair  enough, 
Hart  had  the  cunning  of  the  peasant,  and  was  holding 
out  because  he  could  not  understand  what  Brough  wanted 
the  timber  for.  This  suggested  infinite  profits,  an  intol- 
erable idea.  "  'Ave  another  whiskey,"  said  Hart  des- 
perately. 

"  Don't  mind  if  I  do,"  said  Brough.  He  was  sure  of 
himself,  and  not  afraid  of  liquor.  He  knew  why  they 


358  BLIND  ALLEY 

were  not  drinking  ale,  but  saw  no  reason  why  Hart  should 
not  stand  him  spirits  in  this  little  public-house  where  the 
law  on  treating  was  occasionally  forgotten. 

"  Well  now,"  said  Hart,  "  I'll  throw  it  away  on  yer. 
Make  it  eighty-eight  pounds." 

"  Oh,  well,"  said  Brough  generously.  "  I  don't  want 
you  to  feel  I've  come  for  nothing.  Eighty-seven  pounds." 

Hart  looked  at  him  gloomily.  "  Nicely  seasoned,"  he 
said.  "  Just  what  you  want  for  your  new  cowshed." 

"  It  ain't  for  a  cowshed,"  said  Brough  enigmatically. 
"  We  said  eighty-seven  pounds,  didn't  we?  " 

"  No,  we  didn't,"  said  Hart,  "  we  said  eighty-eight." 

"  Ah,  well,"  said  Brough,  "  never  mind.  Say  no  more 
about  it.  I  owe  you  a  drink.  But  I'll  be  running  across 
you  at  Tenterden  next  week.  So  it  can  keep.  I  must 
be  going  now." 

Hart  protested.  It  wasn't  closing  time  yet.  So  Far- 
mer Brough,  having  swept  aside  the  discussion,  supplied 
a  little  small  talk: 

"  Hope  we're  going  to  have  a  better  year  than  last 
one.  As  I  was  putting  in  my  spring  sowings,  I  said  to 
myself:  what's  the  good  of  farming  in  this  country?  You 
can't  make  a  living;  it's  all  you  can  do  to  keep  alive, 
what  with  wages,  and  oil-cake  going  up  every  day.  I'd 
like  to  know  what  the  government's  up  to  with  its  twenty- 
five  bob  a  week!  My  men  never  asked  for  twenty-five 
bob  a  week  until  the  people  in  London  got  the  idea.  And 
it  won't  stop  there,  Mr.  Hart;  there's  one  committee 
given  them  thirty  bob  already.  What  for?  When  I  was 
a  nipper  a  man'd  do  well  on  eleven  bob  a  week,  and  bring 
up  ten  children  on  it  too." 

Hart  agreed  abundantly.  A  rapid,  if  inaccurate,  cal- 
culation enabled  him  to  prove  that  the  fixed  price  of  corn 
for  five  years  wouldn't  allow  of  more  than  a  pound  a 


THE  LONE  GREY  COMPANY  359 

week  at  the  outside.  One  might  throw  in  half  a  load 
of  logs,  and  perhaps  a  goose  at  Michaelmas,  he  added 
generously. 

They  talked  of  the  newly  broken  land,  of  the  iniqui- 
tous behaviour  of  the  committee  which  forced  farmers 
to  break  pasture. 

"  They'll  get  a  dirty  crop  out  of  that  land,"  said 
Farmer  Brough.  "  Sarve  'em  right.  They've  ploughed 
up  a  bit  of  down  by  Jenkins'.  You  should  see  it!  They 
call  it  the  '  Plague  of  Egypt ',  'cos  last  year  they  only  got 
seven  ears  of  thin  wheat  out  of  the  whole  field.  And  this 
year'll  be  as  bad.  Land's  full  of  muck,  rotten  with  cam- 
pion from  end  to  end.  Whatever  they  do,  sharps'll  be 
something  dreadful." 

"  Come,  Mr.  Brough,  make  it  eighty-eight  pound.  I 
don't  want  to  think  you've  come  for  nothing." 

Brough  did  not  reply,  but  asked  Keele  for  news  of  his 
son. 

"  He's  doing  well,"  said  the  old  farmer,  who  by  now 
had  gained  pride  in  his  son.  "  He's  a  full  capting  now, 
and  he's  got  the  Military  Cross."  Then,  with  a  vicious 
wink,  he  said  to  Hart:  "  So  Cradoc's  come  back  again. 
Poppin'  in  and  out  of  jail,  ain't  he,  like  the  old  man  in 
the  barometer." 

"  You  hold  your  jaw,"  said  Hart  furiously.  He  wasn't 
going  to  have  his  family  affairs  mixed  up  with  a  bargain. 
He  felt  the  need  to  explain  to  Brough: 

"  Cradoc  ain't  done  anything,  you  know,  only  he's  a 
conscientious  objector.  Don't  you  listen  to  that  old 
sweep;  he's  only  jealous  'cos  Cradoc's  got  a  good  busi- 
ness, and  is  going  to  marry  my  gal.  You  dirty  old  tyke, 
you  can't  keep  one  of  your  boys  and  girls  on  the  muck 
heap  you  call  a  farm.  I'd  sooner  Molly  married  a  con- 
scientious objector  any  day  than  one  of  your  la-di-da 


360  BLIND  ALLEY 

officers.  Your  fine  gentleman'll  come  back  to  touch  his 
hat  to  Squire,  and  be  pleased  to  say  *  thank  you '  for  a 
tanner  tip.  When  the  war's  over  there's  lots  of  people'll 
know  the  difference.  '  It  weren't  such  a  bad  time  in  a 
way '  they'll  say.  They'll  be  sorry,  some  of  them." 

"  So  you'll  be,"  said  Keele,  "  with  your  gal  married 
to  one  of  the  Kaiser's  pals." 

"  It's  all  very  fine  your  talking,"  said  Hart.  "  I  ain't 
a  conscientious  objector  myself,  but  I  dunno  if  I  wouldn't 
have  been  if  I'd  been  of  military  age.  Mightn't  have 
had  the  pluck,  though.  It  ain't  so  nice  sitting  in  prison 
and  hunger-striking,  and  having  your  stomach  shoved 
into  your  feet;  that's  what  it  feels  like  when  they  feed 
you  by  force.  I  don't  mind  him.  He's  against  the  war 
anyway,  and  one  might  do  worse  than  stop  the  war.  I 
don't  think  it  pays,  and  if  it  doesn't  pay  what's  it  for? 
If  a  thing  don't  pay  don't  do  it.  That's  what  I  said  to 
the  vicar  the  other  day  when  he  asked  me  to  promise  not 
to  buy  the  new  reaper  I've  got  to  get  after  the  war  from 
the  Germans.  I  said  to  him :  '  I  want  a  good  reaper 
and  a  cheap  one.  And  if  it's  all  that,  I  don't  care  if 
it's  of  the  devil's  make.'  He  didn't  seem  to  like  it," 
added  the  farmer  with  a  chuckle.  "  I  calls  it  ungrateful: 
vicar  makes  his  living  out  of  the  devil." 

Keele  laughed,  reconciled  by  this  mild  blasphemy. 

"  Vicar  talked  about  atrocities  and  all  that.  Told  him 
I  didn't  care:  if  a  man  sells  me  a  cheap  reaper  he  can 
have  his  atrocities  if  he  don't  do  'em  here.  He  went  on 
in  a  rare  old  way,  asked  me  if  I  didn't  value  my  liberty, 
if  I'd  like  to  see  policemen  at  political  meetings  and  have 
my  letters  opened,  and  to  have  everything  controlled. 
'  Well,'  I  says,  '  everything  is ;  wouldn't  make  much  dif- 
ference if  Kaiser  Bill  did  it  instead  of  Lloyd-George. 
And  I  don't  go  to  political  meetings,  and  I  don't  get 


THE  LONE   GREY   COMPANY     361 

letters  once  in  a  blue  moon.  What  we  want  is  less  people 
to  flap  their  mouths  and  more  people  to  let  us  be.'  " 

"  You're  right  there,"  said  Brough.  "  It'll  be  all  right 
after  the  war.  They  won't  go  on  controlling;  country 
won't  stand  it.  Labourers  won't  hear  much  more  about 
that  twenty-five  bob  a  week  after  the  war.  You'll  always 
get  the  old  men  cheap,  they're  good  enough  for  a  day's 
work  till  they're  seventy.  And  there's  lots  of  men  com- 
ing back  with  only  one  leg.  You'll  get  those  cheap 
because  they'll  have  pensions.  Stands  to  reason." 

"  Ah,  well,"  said  Hart,  "  eighty-seven  pound  ten." 

Farmer  Brough  knitted  his  brows,  with  an  air  of  sub- 
lime concession  said:  "  Oh,  all  right,  have  it  your  own 
way.  But  mind  you,  you've  got  to  cart  it  to  my  place." 

Then  the  debate  began  all  over  again. 

VII 

THE  maid  announced  Mr.  and  Mrs.  March.  Auto- 
matically nervous,  Sylvia,  who  was  sprawling  in  an  arm- 
chair and  showing  too  much  leg,  leapt  to  her  feet,  but 
Captain  Orton  still  lounged  against  the  mantelpiece. 
The  old  couple,  as  they  came  in,  radiated  disapproval. 
They  shook  hands  without  a  word,  bowed  stiffly  when 
Sylvia  introduced  Orton.  Sylvia  asked  if  they  had  had 
a  good  journey.  They  said:  "  Yes."  Then  whether  they 
had  recently  heard  from  Oliver.  Mrs.  March  said  "  No." 
Mr.  March  was  about  sixty,  dressed  in  a  countrified 
frock  coat,  and  wore  glace  kid  boots.  His  wife  was  much 
younger,  very  thin,  very  tall,  rather  like  Oliver,  had  been 
pretty  once  upon  a  time.  Now  her  tight-drawn  fair  hair 
was  streaked  with  grey,  and  insufficiently  brushed.  They 
were  dry,  shy,  meanly  hostile,  typical  gentlefolk  from  a 
little  town.  Almost  at  once  Orton  grew  conscious  of 


362  BLIND  ALLEY 

their  disapproval.  The  old  man  stared  at  him  as  if  he 
wondered  what  the  devil  he  was  doing  there,  while  Mrs. 
March  looked  about  the  drawing-room  overfilled  with 
little  tables  loaded  with  silver  ornaments  and  china  pigs, 
at  the  couches  that  looked  too  soft.  She  was  excited, 
for  she  was  a  pure  woman,  and  flats  felt  rather  impure. 
Sylvia,  too,  was  impure.  It  was  delicious. 

Orton  shook  hands  hurriedly,  mumbled  that  he  had  a 
pressing  engagement,  and  went.  As  the  door  closed  the 
old  people  stared  at  Sylvia  as  if  saying:  "  Now."  Sylvia 
was  impelled  to  apologise: 

"  Captain  Orton  is  such  a  nice  man.  He's  a  great  pal 
of  Oliver's.  He's  on  short  leave  and  was  giving  me  news 
of  him." 

"  Is  he  well?  "  said  Mrs.  March. 

"  Captain  Orton  cannot  have  realised  who  we  were," 
said  Mr.  March,  "  or  he  would  have  given  us  news  of 
Oliver." 

"  No,"  said  Sylvia  confusedly.  "  He  was  in  a  hurry, 
you  see."  She  was  telling  the  truth.  There  was  nothing 
between  her  and  Orton,  but  the  old  couple  thrust  guilt 
upon  her. 

"  I  must  say  it  is  very  strange,"  said  Mr.  March,  "  but 
let  that  pass." 

Nothing  was  said  for  a  moment.  "  This  is  awful," 
thought  Sylvia.  They  were  still  scheduling  her  pel/Ses- 
sions. Then  Mrs.  March  said: 

"  I'm  sorry  we  couldn't  ask  you  down,  but  we're  so 
short  of  servants."  They  exchanged  two  or  three  griev- 
ances against  servants,  and  silence  fell  again.  Sylvia 
felt  that  Mrs.  March  was  not  telling  the  truth,  that  the 
idea  of  having  her  down,  "  the  woman  who  had  ruined 
their  son  ",  and  of  exposing  her  to  the  gossip  of  their 
friends,  was  horrible  to  them.  They  had  come  to  inspect 


THE  LONE   GREY  COMPANY     363 

her.  "Well,  let  them,"  she  thought  defiantly;  then  she 
reacted.  After  all  Mr.  March  was  a  man,  and  instinct- 
ively she  wanted  to  charm  him. 

"  I'm  so  glad  to  see  you,"  she  said,  "  I  wanted  to  know 
Oliver's  people." 

"  It  is  indeed  necessary,"  said  Mr.  March.  "  How  long 
did  you  know  Oliver  before  —  before  what  happened?" 

"  For  a  year." 

"  It  is  not  a  very  long  time." 

"  Oh,  in  war  time,  you  know,  things  move  quickly." 

"  As  you  say,  Mrs.  Jervaulx.  I  suppose  that  you  are 
called  Mrs.  Jervaulx?  " 

"  Yes,  of  course,  until  —  well,  anyhow  it  doesn't 
matter." 

"  No,"  said  Mrs.  March,  "  of  course  it  doesn't."  As 
she  perceived  that  heat  was  arising  she  obeyed  her  Vic- 
torian tradition  and  changed  the  subject.  "  That's  Oli- 
ver's photograph  you've  got  on  the  mantelpiece.  I  don't 
seem  to  know  it." 

Mr.  March  got  up  to  look.  "  It's  a  new  one,"  he  said. 
"  It  seems  to  me  strange  that  Oliver  should  not  have 
sent  us  one." 

"  I  had  it  taken,"  said  Sylvia  hurriedly,  "  only  six. 
And  I've  kept  them  all  so  as  to  have  one  in  each  room. 
I'm  £o  fond  of  him,"  she  added,  speaking  at  random. 

-.-.Irs.  March  looked  at  her  more  kindly,  but  her  hus- 
band still  stood  by  the  mantelpiece.  "  And  who  are 
these  other  young  men  in  khaki?  "  he  asked. 

"  That's  my  brother  Stephen.     He's  been  wounded." 

"  Oh.    And  this  one?  " 

"Oh,  that  — that's  just  a  friend.  And  that's  Bobbie 
Marchmont,  my  cousin.  He  was  killed." 

"  And  what  about  the  others?  " 

"  Oh,  they're  friends." 


364  BLIND  ALLEY 

"  You  seem  to  have  a  great  many  friends." 
A  blush  of  anger  rose  in  Sylvia's  cheeks.    Hadn't  she 
a  right  to  friends? 

"  Yes,  I  have,"  she  said.    "  And  why  not?  " 
"  I  should  have  thought  that  in  your  position  you  would 
be  careful  in  the  selection  of  your  friends." 
"  May  I  ask  what  you  have  against  them?  " 
"  Charles,  please  ..." 

"  No,  Emily,  please,  let  me  get  a  word  in.  I  should 
have  thought  that  at  least  until  the  scandal  had  blown 
over  you  would  not  care  to  exhibit  so  many  acquaint- 
ances, young  men,  and  so  forth." 

"  Mr.  March,  surely  you  don't  suggest  that  I'm  not 
to  see  anybody." 

"  Not  in  the  least.    I  suppose  you  have  a  family." 
"  One  doesn't  live  on  the  top  of  one's  family." 
"  One  would  escape  many  perils  if  one  did,  many  perils 
—  and  many  scandals." 

Sylvia  jumped  up,  and  despite  a  protesting  gesture 
from  Mrs.  March  cried:  "But,  look  here!  What  have  I 
done?  Have  you  only  come  here  to  be  nasty  to  me?  " 

"  We've  come  here  to  form  an  idea  of  the  lady  whom 
Oliver  wishes  to  marry." 
"  I'm  afraid  it's  not  a  very  favourable  idea." 
"  Oh,  we  don't  say  that,"  replied  Mrs.  March. 
"  Emily,  don't  interrupt.    I  don't  say  we've  formed 
an  unfavourable  idea,  but  let  me  say  that  we  arrived 
here  punctually,  by  appointment,  and  we  find  you  in  the 
company  of  a  young  man  ..." 
"But  he'd  only  dropped  in  to  tell  me  ..." 
"  That  is  as  it  may  be,"  said  Mr.  March.    "  I  make 
no  charge  against  you,  but  I  think  it's  most  unfortunate 
in  your  position.     In  your  position  it  seems  to  me  that 
one  should  be  particularly  careful  not  to  give  an  oppor- 


THE  LONE   GREY   COMPANY     365 

tunity  to  gossip.  Apparently  you  do  not  realise  your 
position." 

"  My  position!  "  cried  Sylvia.  "  Oh,  I'm  not  defend- 
ing myself,  but  really  I  can't  shut  myself  up  in  a  flat 
until  Oliver  can  marry  me,  and  that  can't  be  for  some 
months." 

"  Certainly  not.  As  you  say,  you  need  not  shut  your- 
self up  until  we've  considered  whether  our  son  shall  many 
you." 

"  Considered? "  said  Sylvia.  "  How  do  you  mean, 
considered?  " 

"  Well,  of  course  we've  to  consider  the  question." 

"  But  I  thought  —  but  really  —  Oliver  himself  —  it's 
not  only  that  he  wants  to  do  the  decent  thing." 

"  We're  not  talking  of  the  decent  thing,"  said  Mr. 
March.  "  That  term  means  nothing.  Some  deeds  are 
righteous  and  some  unrighteous." 

Sylvia  stared.    She  felt  numb.    He  went  on: 

"  You  must  not  be  surprised  that  if  we  find  you  in 
compromising  circumstances,  —  please,  please  allow  me 
to  speak,  —  in  compromising  circumstances,  surrounded 
by  all  the  evidence  of  a  frivolous  way  of  life,  you  must 
not  be  surprised  that  we  should  hesitate." 

Then  Sylvia  lost  her  temper.  "  If  you've  only  come 
here  to  insult  me,"  she  said,  "  you've  done  it;  you'd  bet- 
ter go  before  we  quarrel." 

Mrs.  March  rose  as  if  to  intervene,  but  the  duel  was 
joined. 

"  We  may  not  meet  again,"  said  Mr.  March.  "  I  do 
not  want  to  do  anything  rash,  but  I  do  not  at  present  feel 
inclined  to  allow  my  son  to  marry  you." 

"  I'm  not  asking  for  your  consent.  I  don't  think  I'll 
marry  him  however  much  he  wants  me  to." 

"  That  might  be  very  satisfactory." 


366  BLIND   ALLEY 

"  Do  you  think  I'm  going  to  be  insulted  and  bullied? 
Certainly  I'm  not  going  to  marry  him  if  he  feels  as  you 
do." 

"  Oh,  of  course,  Oliver  would  want  to  atone  for  the 
wrong  he  has  done,"  said  Mrs.  March. 

"  Is  that  how  he  feels?  "  said  Sylvia,  in  a  low  voice. 
"  Well,  if  it's  like  that,  I'm  going  to  write  to  him  now, 
and  tell  him  I've  done  with  him.  I'm  not  going  to  be 
treated  like  an  outcast,  a  leper.  I  think  you're  horrid, 
both  of  you.  You're  hard  and  you're  sanctimonious." 

"  Emily,  let  us  go." 

"  Hard  and  sanctimonious.  You  don't  know  what  love 
is,  either  of  you.  Or  if  you  do  you've  been  cunning 
enough  not  to  get  found  out." 

"  Good  afternoon." 

She  was  alone.  Almost  at  once  her  exasperation 
turned  to  fear.  So  that  was  the  end  of  it.  What  was 
she  going  to  do?  In  another  three  months  the  decree 
would  be  made  absolute.  She  would  no  longer  be  Mrs. 
Jervaulx,  but  Mrs.  Sylvia  Jervaulx.  Skulk  in  a  flat  on 
an  allowance,  and  take  tea  in  boarding-houses  with  the 
wives  of  cinema  managers  and  Serbian  countesses.  Or 
go  back  to  Knapenden.  No,  not  that.  Never.  She 
thought  of  going  on  the  stage.  Or  she  might  start  a  lady 
barbers' shop.  Knapenden!  No,  never.  "  I'd  rather  go 
on  the  streets,"  she  thought.  Then  she  cried  for  nearly 
an  hour,  and  a  longing  for  her  mother,  who  was  like  her, 
who  would  understand  her,  overcame  her.  She  would 
run  down  next  morning  and  ask  her  what  to  do. 

VIII 

"  How  much  longer  is  it  going  on? "  asked  Ethel 
Cradoc. 


THE  LONE   GREY   COMPANY     367 

"  What  going  on?  " 

"  This  going  to  jail,  and  coming  out,  and  going  back." 
"  I  don't  know."    Cradoc  said  this  as  he  might  have 
said:  "  I  don't  care."    He  felt  too  weak  to  argue.    But 
Ethel  was  obstinate. 

"  How  long  do  you  expect  to  be  out  this  time?  " 
"  I  don't  know.    Perhaps  they'll  let  me  alone.    Per- 
haps the  war  will  stop." 

"  It  ain't  good  for  the  shop,"  said  Ethel.  She  gave 
brief  news  of  trade.  Evidently  the  business  was  going 
to  survive,  for  Lady  Oakley's  boycott  had  never  been 
completely  effective,  and  during  the  first  few  months 
Ethel  had  managed  by  using  a  portion  of  their  savings. 
Then,  by  degrees,  the  villagers,  who  preferred  con- 
scientious bacon  which  they  could  select  to  loyal  bacon 
chosen  by  the  Rye  butcher,  had  recovered  their  ration 
books  and  begun  to  come  in  in  the  evening,  when 
nobody  from  the  Place  was  likely  to  know;  later  they 
sent  their  children  during  the  day,  reserving  themselves 
as  a  way  of  escape  to  say  that  they  didn't  know  Mary 
Ellen  had  gone  to  the  shop.  Villa-Land,  being  middle 
class,  went  in  more  hotly  for  patriotic  purchase,  and  for 
a  long  time  had  supported  Lady  Oakley's  enterprise,  but 
two  of  the  Rye  carriers  having  been  called  up,  Mr.  Mar- 
tin got  so  much  work  that  groceries  arrived  later  and 
later,  sometimes  not  at  all.  So  Villa-Land  had  to  run 
out  for  minor  supplies,  bought  under  protest,  but  still 
bought.  At  last  Mr.  Martin  made  so  much  money  that 
he  decided  he  was  getting  old,  and  that  Knapenden  was 
off  his  beat,  whereupon  Villa-Land,  filled  with  shame, 
but  cheered  by  economy,  registered  for  sugar  and  bacon 
at  the  conscientious  shop.  Only  Knapenden  Place  and 
a  few  of  the  rich  residents  of  Villa-Land  refused  to  deal, 
and  had  weekly  parcels  down  from  London  stores. 


368  BLIND   ALLEY 

Cradoc  listened  without  a  smile.  A  year  ago  this 
would  have  filled  him  with  ironic  amusement,  but  he 
was  too  tired  to  care  much  whether  the  business  did  well 
or  not.  He  had  been  forcibly  fed  again;  once  more  he 
had  known  the  prison  infirmary,  and  had  been  discharged 
with  a  half-expressed  recommendation  from  the  governor 
to  go  to  the  devil,  or  commit  suicide,  or  something.  He 
left  the  jail,  his  head  bent  under  the  weight  of  his  hope- 
lessness, for  his  agony  must  last  through  the  war,  and 
there  seemed  no  end  to  it.  People  had  been  kind  to  him 
in  the  infirmary;  every  day  the  newspaper  had  been 
smuggled  in.  He  knew  all  about  the  German  offensive, 
knew  that  through  the  previous  month,  and  through  this 
one,  April,  the  Allies  had  been  cracking  under  the  German 
onrush.  He  had  wondered  whether  this  would  end  the 
war;  he  had  ceased  to  hope  for  an  equitable  discussion, 
had  come  to  understand  that  only  complete  defeat  of 
one  side  could  end  it.  "  Well,  let  it  be  England  and  be 
done."  He  hoped  nothing  of  the  future;  the  winners 
would  grow  more  arrogant,  more  militarist;  the  losers 
would  sulk  and  plot  revenge.  Even  labour  seemed  false, 
divided;  some  sections,  such  as  the  seamen,  were  even 
ready  to  impede  the  Labour  Party ;  labour  was  in  chaos ; 
some  leaders  wanted  the  social  revolution,  and  others 
wore  khaki ;  some  unions  followed  their  officials,  and  some 
struck  against  their  own  secretaries ;  the  men  made  bar- 
gains, which  he  thought  foolish,  and  broke  them,  which 
he  thought  wrong;  the  masters  made  bargains,  which  he 
thought  crafty,  and  broke  them,  which  he  thought  nat- 
ural. Even  he  could  no  longer  find  his  way  in  the  sec- 
tional welter  of  minor  labour  parties. 

Was  it  to  be  hoped  that  these  parties  who  fought  each 
other  could  cooperate  to  combat  hatred?  He  was  too 
weak  to  argue.  In  the  train  from  Robertsbridge  he  had 


THE   LONE   GREY  COMPANY     369 

sat  with  a  fat,  angry  corn  broker  who  had  once  been 
overcharged  in  a  Cologne  hotel.  All  the  way  the  man 
had  raved,  pointing  a  stubby  hand  with  a  diamond  ring 
on  it;  he  had  clamoured:  "  Intern  them  all,  intern  Ger- 
mans, intern  naturalised  Germans,  intern  fathers  of  Ger- 
mans who  had  enlisted,  intern  the  women  who  had  dis- 
graced themselves  by  marrying  Germans,  intern  the 
English  children  of  the  accursed  race.  And  no  more 
German  prisoners  should  be  driven  to  their  work 
in  lorries;  no  more  jam  for  the  Huns;  no  more  leave 
to  internees  to  go  and  attend  to  their  businesses  and 
take  the  bread  out  of  our  mouths.  Denaturalise  the 
swine.  Make  all  the  Schweinsteins  resume  their  names. 
Get  them  out  of  the  Government  offices.  Shoot  the 
Swiss  ..." 

Cradoc  had  said  hardly  anything.  He  realised  that  if 
one  made  war  one  must  make  it  like  this;  he  reflected 
that  if  he  were  Home  Secretary  he  would  do  all  these 
things,  and  that  a  pacifist  turned  warrior  must  be  terrible 
because  logical.  But  it  sickened  him,  because  he  under- 
stood that  this  fermenting  hate  must  stay  within  men, 
raise  the  bitter  bread  of  future  wars,  that  out  of  the  war 
would  arise  a  sham  league  of  nations,  sham  because  all 
would  retain  their  arms,  because  it  would  be  an  umbrella 
for  alliances.  He  was  too  weak  to  argue.  He  was  too 
weak  to  want  anything  but  rest  and  silence.  When,  that 
night,  he  went  to  Ascalon  Farm,  sometimes  stopping  to 
rest,  he  was  prepared  to  be  insulted  by  Hart,  to  be 
turned  out.  But  he  was  not  even  surprised  to  find  them 
cordial.  Molly  kissed  him  before  her  parents ;  Mrs.  Hart 
smiled  up  from  her  knitting.  And  Hart  was  almost 
admiring. 

"  They  can  say  what  they  like,"  he  remarked,  "  you've 
got  some  spirit.  Not,  mind  you,  that  I  think  you're 


370  BLIND   ALLEY 

right.  Still  ..."  His  curiosity  awoke.  "  How  far 
up  your  nose  did  they  push  those  tubes?  " 

Cradoc  realised  that  to  them  his  career  was  rather 
dramatic;  he  was  not  to  them  a  respectable  person,  but, 
like  a  cinema  burglar,  he  was  an  attractive  one.  He 
gave  them  only  brief  accounts  of  his  prison  experience. 
At  last  Hart  winked.  "  It's  time  we  were  getting  to  bed, 
mother.  You  can  lock  up,  Molly,  by  and  by." 

As  soon  as  they  were  alone  Molly  Hart  grew  archly 
absorbed  in  her  sewing,  and  for  some  time  Cradoc  said 
nothing.  It  was  like  a  dream  to  see  her  sitting  there, 
with  the  light  making  a  golden  patch  on  her  chestnut 
head.  Yes,  she  was  rest.  Once  upon  a  time  she  had 
been  feverish  excitement.  Now  she  was  all  sweet  calm, 
and  he  needed  it.  He  said:  "  Going  to  marry  me  soon, 
Molly?  " 

"  If  you  like." 

"  Then  let's  get  married  as  soon  as  we  can." 

"  All  right.  Shall  I  put  up  the  banns  if  you  aren't 
friendly  with  Mr.  Denny?  " 

Cradoc  did  not  reply  for  a  moment.  A  year  before 
he  would  have  fought  to  the  end  against  being  married 
in  church,  but  now  he  felt  past  that.  Let  them  mumble. 
"  Well,"  he  said,  "  perhaps  it's  better  you  should  see  to 
it,  though  Mr.  Denny's  the  only  one  who  gave  me  a  nod 
to-day.  The  others  are  still  a  bit  frightened  of  the 
Place;  so's  he,  of  course,  but  he's  more  frightened  of 
seeming  frightened."  Then  he  grasped  the  girl  by  the 
arm,  and  throwing  himself  upon  his  knees  rested  his  head 
on  the  broad,  soft  breast.  Molly's  arms  closed  around 
his  thin  shoulders.  How  weak  and  ill  he  looked!  Never 
before  had  she  wholly  loved  him. 


THE   LONE   GREY   COMPANY     371 

IX 

WHEN  Sylvia  arrived  in  the  afternoon,  and  in  a  single, 
breathless  sentence  confided  to  her  mother  what  had 
happened,  Lady  Oakley  did  not  say  much.  She  was  as 
wise  when  people  expressed  their  sentimental  agonies  as 
she  was  rough  and  tactless  when  their  preoccupations 
grew  intellectual.  She  merely  said:  "Not  marry  him? 
Nonsense.  We'll  talk  about  it  later.  We'll  see  your 
father  after  dinner  to-night."  For  Lady  Oakley  believed 
that  her  husband,  who  never  cared  what  he  ate,  and 
never  took  more  than  half  a  glass  of  port,  was  like  the 
man  of  fiction,  replete  and  slightly  drunk  after  dinner, 
therefore  amiable.  "Lie  down  and  have  a  rest,"  she 
added.  "You  need  it.  YouVe  got  a  red  nose  and 
swollen  eyes.  And  don't  talk  to  Monica;  she's  always 
mooning  about." 

So,  Sylvia  having  rested,  and  Monica  having  tired  her- 
self out  in  a  long,  aimless  walk,  dinner  passed  off  well. 
Lady  Oakley,  who  was  still  unable  to  understand  her 
husband's  attitude  toward  the  war,  had  learnt  that  the 
war  generally  produced  bad  temper;  she  had  learnt  this 
as  a  dog  comes  to  understand  that  when  a  man  puts  on 
his  hat  it  means  a  walk.  So  she  avoided  the  war,  and 
beyond  an  outburst  brought  about  by  botulism,  the  latest 
fashionable  disease,  which,  she  declared,  had  been  intro- 
duced by  Hun  germs,  all  was  amity  and  peace.  As  soon 
as  Sir  Hugh  went  to  his  study  she  left  the  drawing-room, 
followed  by  Sylvia,  telling  Monica  not  to  come  into  her 
father's  study  for  a  little  while. 

They  found  Sir  Hugh  at  his  desk  with  a  pile  of  little 
books  and  socialist  newspapers  which  he  had  bought  from 
the  Bomb  Shop  in  Charing  Cross  Road.  On  the  corner 
of  his  desk  sat  as  usual  Kallikrates,  golden,  blinking,, 


372  BLIND  ALLEY 

superior.     Lady  Oakley  ignored  the  objectionable  crea- 
ture, and  at  once  attacked  her  subject. 

"  Hugh,"  she  said,  "  Mr.  and  Mrs.  March  came  to  see 
Sylvia  yesterday.  I'm  afraid  they  didn't  get  on." 

"  Oh?    It's  the  first  time  you've  seen  them,  Sylvia?  '' 

"  Yes,  father,  and  I'm  afraid  it's  the  last.  They  didn't 
like  me.  And  I  didn't  like  them.  Oh,  they're  horrid, 
horrid." 

"  Tell  your  father  what  happened,"  said  Lady  Oakley. 

Sylvia  gave  an  incoherent  account  of  the  interview, 
summed  up  the  old  people:  "They're  narrow,  they're 
hard,  they  don't  like  me,  they  think  I'm  a  fast  woman." 

"  Don't  talk  like  that,  Sylvia,"  said  Sir  Hugh  angrily. 
It  irritated  him  that  Sylvia  should  use  such  words.  And 
in  a  way  they  were  true. 

"  Well,  that's  what  they  think,  father.  Just  because 
Captain  Orton  was  there,  and  because  I'd  Stephen's  photo 
on  my  mantelpiece.  But  that's  not  why.  They  weren't 
going  to  like  me.  They  hated  me  before  they  saw  me. 
And  I'm  not  going  to  have  people  talking  about  my 
position,  and  I  won't  have  them  considering  my  position. 
I  won't  marry  him.  If  they  begged  me  to  marry  him,  I 
wouldn't  do  it." 

"  Nonsense,"  said  Lady  Oakley,  "  you've  got  to  marry 
him." 

"  I  won't  marry  him,"  said  Sylvia  weakly. 

"  Don't  be  silly.  Hugh,  tell  her  not  to  be  a  fool.  Of 
course  she's  got  to  marry  him." 

"  It  seems  to  me,"  said  Sir  Hugh,  "  that  it's  for  the  boy 
to  say." 

"  He  doesn't  matter,"  said  Lady  Oakley. 
,    "  Oh,"  said  Sir  Hugh.     "  Then  why  do  you  want  her 
to  marry  a  feeble  young  man  like  that?  " 

"  He's  not  feeble,"  said  Sylvia,  defending  her  property. 


THE  LONE   GREY   COMPANY     373 

"  Oh,"  cried  Lady  Oakley,  "  what  does  it  matter  what 
he  is?  All  we've  got  to  think  about  is  how  to  get  you 
out  of  this  mess." 

Then  Sylvia  stamped,  and  Kallikrates  stood  up,  his 
fur  bristling  with  apprehension.  "  I  won't  be  talked  to 
like  that.  I  won't  have  everybody  talking  about  my 
position,  and  saying  I'm  in  a  mess.  You're  as  bad  as 
his  people.  I  won't  have  it.  I'll  go  away.  I'll  go  on 
the  stage." 

"  Sylvia,  don't  be  a  fool.  You  know  quite  well  there's 
only  one  way  out  and  that's  to  marry  him." 

"  I  don't  see  it  at  all,"  said  Sir  Hugh,  seizing  Kalli- 
krates who  was  preparing  to  leap  off  the  desk. 

"  But  whatever  else  is  she  to  do?  "  cried  Lady  Oakley, 
exasperated. 

"  She  can  —  now,  Kalli,  don't  be  cross,"  said  Sir  Hugh, 
in  whose  arms  the  cat  was  struggling  —  "  she  can  come 
back  here." 

"  How  can  you  talk  such  nonsense?  How  can  she 
come  back  here?  She  won't  be  able  to  go  anywhere." 

"  Well,  why  should  she  throw  herself  away?  There, 
there,  Kalli,  there's  a  good  cat.  There,  sit  down  nicely." 

"  Oh,  do  let  that  cat  alone;  this  is  serious.  Do  be  prac- 
tical for  a  moment.  Sylvia  can't  shut  herself  up  here. 
It's  no  use;  she's  made  a  fool  of  herself.  What  we've  got 
to  do  is  to  cover  it  up.  Are  you  prepared  to  have  her 
shut  herself  up  here  —  going  nowhere  —  having  to  be  sent 
upstairs  when  people  call?  Do  you  want  people  to  re- 
fuse invitations  to  tennis  parties  in  case  they  might  meet 
Sylvia?  " 

"  Don't,  mother,  don't." 

"  It's  no  use  saying  '  don't.'  That's  what's  going  to 
happen.  Your  father's  trying  to  make  you  into  a  scan- 
dal, just  because  he  lives  in  the  clouds.  But  it  shan't  be, 


374  BLIND  ALLEY 

it  shan't  be.  There's  only  one  thing  to  be  done:  you 
must  marry  him." 

"  I'm  afraid  they  won't  allow  him  anything,"  said  Syl- 
via, miserably. 

"  Well,  then,  we  must.  Hugh,  you  must  allow  them 
five  hundred  a  year  and  find  him  something  to  do  when 
the  war's  over." 

"  How  am  I  to  find  anything  for  a  young  weakling  like 
that?  " 

"  Never  mind  the  weakling.  What's  the  good  of  your 
having  influence  if  you  don't  use  it?  " 

Sir  Hugh  stared  at  Kallikrates,  who  was  growing  ac- 
customed to  this  passionate  conversation,  and  now  stared 
at  the  humans  with  an  air  of  mild  surprise.  "  Sylvia,"  he 
said  at  last,  "  what  do  you  want  to  do?  " 

"  Father,"  her  voice  was  unsteady  with  tears,  "  I  don't 
know.  I  expect  mother's  right." 

"  Well,  then,"  said  Sir  Hugh,  "  we  must  see  what  can 
be  done.  Sylvia !  "  he  cried  out,  "  darling,  don't  cry, 
please  don't  cry." 

"  Oh,  go  to  bed,"  snapped  Lady  Oakley,  "  and  have 
some  Benger's." 

Sylvia  went  out;  she  was  sobbing  loudly. 

"  Hugh,"  said  Lady  Oakley,  "  that  settles  that.  Now 
what  about  Stephen?  " 

"  Has  Stephen  done  anything?  "  said  Sir  Hugh  appre- 
hensively. 

"  Not  that  I  know  of,  but  he  wants  to  marry  Louise." 

"  What?    When  did  he  tell  you  that?  " 

Lady  Oakley  smiled.  "  He  didn't  tell  me.  He  doesn't 
know  himself.  Of  course  you're  blind,  like  most  men. 
He's  always  with  her.  He's  a  different  man  when  she's 
here.  When  he  began  to  brood  at  tea,  the  other  day,  and 
to  sing  that  awful  song,  you  know:  '  Oh,  my,  I  don't 


THE  LONE   GREY   COMPANY     375 

want  to  die7,  it  was  she  pulled  him  round.  Well?  Aren't 
you  glad?  " 

"  I  don't  know,"  said  Sir  Hugh. 

"  How  do  you  mean,  you  don't  know?  I  suppose  you 
have  no  objection  to  Louise?  " 

"  Louise !  "  said  Sir  Hugh  softly,  "  no,  of  course  not. 
Only  Stephen's  such  a  crock." 

"  All  the  more  reason  for  him  to  marry  some  one  who'll 
look  after  him." 

"  Louise  might  do  better  than  that,"  said  Sir  Hugh  af- 
ter a  moment.  "  Looking  after  a  man  ..." 

"  Oh !  dear,  oh !  dear !  "  said  Lady  Oakley  wearily. 
"  You're  perfectly  impossible.  I  simply  don't  know  what 
you  mean." 

"  It's  not  very  romantic  for  her,"  said  Sir  Hugh.  While 
Lady  Oakley  stared,  his  mind  rapidly  evoked  his  court- 
ship of  Mrs.  Douglas.  Must  her  child,  his  dream  child, 
be  turned  into  a  nurse.  "  I  don't  want  her  sacrificed,"  he 
said. 

"  Sacrificed !  "  gasped  Lady  Oakley.  "  How  much 
longer  is  this  nonsense  going  on?  You  call  it  sacrifice 
for  her  to  marry  —  my  son.  I'd  like  to  know  what  you've 
got  against  Stephen.  He's  getting  better,  he's  clever,  I 
suppose  —  oh,  this  is  ridiculous.  She'll  do  nicely." 

Do  nicely !     Louise  do  nicely ! 

Lady  Oakley  was  still  talking:  "  I  think  she's  a  very 
lucky  girl.  Perhaps  you've  forgotten  she's  twenty-seven, 
and  in  these  days  a  girl  of  that  age  hasn't  much  chance  of 
marriage.  I  wish  I  hadn't  told  you." 

"  I  don't  want  her  sacrificed  to  clean  up  the  mess  of 
this  war." 

"  We're  not  talking  about  the  war."  Lady  Oakley 
gazed  at  Kallikrates,  who  had  now  folded  his  paws,  and 
rested  upon  his  master  an  entirely  blank  gaze.  "  I  can't 


376  BLIND   ALLEY 

understand  you.  If  Stephen  had  lost  both  arms  and  both 
legs,  and  both  eyes,  if  he  were  off  his  head  —  well,  even 
then,  somebody  would  have  to  look  after  him.  You  and 
I  can't  live  forever.  Monica  may  marry.  Somebody 
must  look  after  him.  You  may  not  care  what  happens  to 
your  son,  but  I  do." 

"  Oh,  well,"  said  Sir  Hugh  wearily, "  we'll  see.  Now  let 
me  alone,  Lena.  I  want  to  think." 

For  a  long  time  Sir  Hugh  rested  his  chin  upon  one  hand, 
holding  out  the  other  towards  Kallikrates,  who  took  no 
notice  at  all.  The  cat  was  resentful;  there  had  been  too 
much  noise  that  night.  Sir  Hugh  tried  to  find  his  way 
through  perplexities.  How  tangled  up  people  were: 
Stephen  crocked,  Sylvia  about  to  be  tied  to  a  worthless 
young  man;  Monica  afflicted  by  some  secret  sorrow;  and 
now  Louise,  truest  daughter  of  them  all,  to  be  thrown 
away.  The  war,  always  the  war,  maiming  some,  killing 
others,  remoulding  lives  to  suit  its  brutal  aims,  patching, 
so  as  to  make  more  young  life,  to  have  more  young  life 
in  twenty  years  to  use  and  to  mar.  He  saw  himself  an 
unpractical  idealist.  What  was  the  good  of  standing  out 
against  Sylvia's  marriage  —  or  Louise's  marriage?  What 
was  the  good  of  sentencing  these  young  people  gone  astray 
to  a  solitude  which  would  not  be  happy?  He  must  give 
in.  One  could  not  create  ideal  lives  in  an  unideal  world. 
One  must  do  what  one  could.  He  buried  his  face  in  his 
hands.  He  was  unhappy  because  he  saw  life  clearly,  and 
yet  could  not  command  it.  Still  Kallikrates  stared  at 
him,  the  black  lunes  of  his  eyes  broad  with  enquiry,  with- 
out partisanship.  He  observed  that  the  man  looked  de- 
pressed. He  registered  this  as  a  fact.  As  'the  man  did 
not  move,  Kallikrates  lost  even  that  intellectual  interest. 
A  vast  indifference  flooded  him.  He  felt  lofty  and  de- 
tached as  a  god  upon  his  mountain.  Languor  invaded 


THE  LONE   GREY  COMPANY     377 

him;  his  eyelids  slowly  drooped  over  the  moist  gold  of  his 
eyes.  His  eyes  closed.  Kallikrates  was  no  longer  a  cit- 
izen of  a  warring  world.  He  floated  in  the  ether  of  his 
abstraction.  He  was  not  asleep;  he  was  dematerialised. 
Little  by  little  a  purr  of  contentment  rose  from  his  body, 
free  from  all  passion  and  all  responsibility. 


MONICA  idly  examined  her  uncle's  library.  It  was  not 
a  large  one,  and  it  was  very  like  him.  Set  in  a  large 
Sheraton  cabinet  were  a  great  number  of  novels,  some  by 
Mrs.  Humphry  Ward,  a  good  many  by  Mr.  E.  F.  Ben- 
son, and  a  wilderness  of  Elinor  Glyns  and  Victoria 
Crosses.  She' found  the  memoirs  of  Mr.  Justice  Hawkins, 
travels  in  somethingistan,  Night  Life  in  London,  and  a 
great  treatise  on  the  tracking  of  the  wily  gazelle.  The 
lower  shelf  was  occupied  by  a  complete  library  edition  of 
George  Meredith.  Monica  took  out  "  The  Egoist  ",  found 
it  dusty  and  uncut,  and  as  she  used  the  paper  knife  agreed 
that  her  uncle's  promise  of  a  dull  time  was  being  real- 
ised. Her  short  stay  had  not  been  enlivened  by  the  usual 
London  pleasures;  now  restaurants  came  at  half-past  nine 
under  the  hand  of  a  law  which  forbade  hot  meals,  while 
theatres  sent  their  patrons  to  bed  at  half-past  ten.  It 
felt  very  funny  to  bring  one's  sugar  to  the  Ritz  to  tea. 
And  Genevieve  was  no  solace ;  she  was  intolerably  pleased 
with  being  Mrs.  Drayton,  having  a  father  who  controlled 
the  drugs,  and  a  husband  who  controlled  the  Controller; 
she  hinted  that  her  own  home  control  was  still  more  lofty. 
Monica  thought  of  these  things  because  she  was  nervous, 
because  she  had  to  see  Hum.  What  was  she  going  to  say 
to  him?  What  might  she  not  have  said  if  she  had  not 
met  Frank  Cottenham?  "  I  don't  know,"  she  thought, 


378  BLIND   ALLEY 

"  I  was  so  different  then."  Then  the  bell  rang  and  she 
grew  defensive. 

Hum  had  not  changed  much,  except  that  his  face  was 
thinner,  his  look  more  intense.  He  was  handsome  in  a 
tortured  way.  He,  too,  was  nervous,  for  he  dropped  her 
hand  almost  as  soon  as  he  grasped  it.  Then,  hurriedly, 
they  began  to  talk.  They  spoke  of  the  war,  which  in  that 
month  of  June  was  going  worse  and  worse. 

"  I  wish  I  hadn't  taken  leave,"  said  Hurn,  "  even  though 
it  was  only  four  days.  Every  moment  one  feels  we  may 
go  pop.  We  just  saved  it  at  Amiens;  we  half  saved  it  at 
Ypres;  now  they're  bursting  in  on  the  South  —  Paris  may 
go.  God  knows  what's  going  to  happen."  He  paced  the 
room  agitatedly.  "  I  must  get  back  to-night.  I  can't 
believe  we're  going  to  be  licked." 

"  But  surely  you  don't  think  that?  " 

"  I  don't  know,  I  don't  understand !  It's  incredible.  If 
it  hadn't  been  for  Byng  at  Arras  we  were  done.  And 
yet,  we  go  on  cracking  —  nearly.  Are  we  going  to  crack 
for  good?  Laugh  at  me  if  you  like,  but  many  a  night  I've 
knelt  in  my  dug-out  and  prayed." 

Monica  was  shocked.  In  her  class  one  prayed  in 
church,  on  Sundays.  So  she  bravely  cribbed  from  Mr. 
Harold  Begbie: 

"  They  say  the  war  has  brought  about  a  spiritual  re- 
vival." 

"  Yes,"  said  the  young  man  grudgingly,  "  sometimes  I 
think  so.  Yes,  perhaps.  You  wouldn't  believe  it,  the 
most  hardened  sinners  go  down  on  their  marrow  bones 
before  going  over  the  top.  Some  people  call  it  fire  in- 
surance, but  I'm  not  so  sure.  You  know,  when  you're 
out  there,  with  the  eternal  stars  over  your  head  in  a  sky 
black  and  deep  as  hell,  all  alone  because  you  can't  see 
your  fellows,  and  nobody  by  your  side  except  death,  you 


THE  LONE   GREY   COMPANY     379 

can't  help  believing.  It  would  be  too  hideous  not  to.  A 
world  as  horrible  as  this  must  be  balanced  by  a  better 
one;  without  that  it  would  topple  over.  And  men  who 
that  morning  were  playing  chess  with  you  are  lying  out 
in  No  Man's  Land,  stiff  in  their  blood.  I  can't  believe 
they're  still  there.  It's  only  their  shadow  that's  lying  tied 
in  knots.  One  of  our  crowd  started  shouting  out  one 
night  across  the  wire:  'Bertie!  I  say,  Bertie,  old  bean! 
How  are  things  up  there?  What?  Not  so  bad.  Heaven's 
just  topping?  Yes,  dear  old  thing,  I  hear.  What's  that? 
You  say  you've  booked  a  pew  for  me.  Right,  oh !  I  shan't 
be  long.'  They  said  he  was  mad." 

Monica  looked  at  him  with  dilated  eyes.  Mad!  Was 
Hurn  mad  too?  He  terrified  her,  so  again  she  became 
commonplace.  "  Oh,"  she  said  lightly.  "  Of  course  some 
people  think  that  one  can  talk  to  spirits.  I  suppose 
you've  read  '  Raymond'?  " 

Hurn  stared  at  her  as  if  thinking  of  something  else: 

" '  Raymond/  "  he  said,  vaguely.  "  Yes.  I  skimmed 
through  it  the  other  day.  It  may  be  true."  He  drew  his 
hand  across  his  forehead.  "  How  can  one  tell?  Who 
cares  whether  this  war  is  bringing  us  a  purer  and  simpler 
domestic  life?  Or  barbarism?  Or  whether  indeed  Jo- 
hannes is  right  and  this  is  Armageddon,  with  Judgment 
Day  before  recess?  We're  alive.  Can't  we  take  some- 
thing while  we're  alive?  "  With  a  precipitancy  that 
shook  her  he  added:  "  Monica,  will  you  marry  me?  " 

Still  she  stared  at  him.  He  frightened  her,  and  yet,  she 
abominably  pitied  him.  She  wanted  to  say  "  yes",  and 
"  no."  "  No  "  because  of  all  the  glamourous  past;  "  yes  " 
because  he  was  like  a  lost  dog.  So  she  temporised:  "I 
don't  know." 

The  young  man  bent  forward,  clasping  his  knees.  "  You 
don't  know,"  he  said.  "  No,  I  suppose  you  don't.  And 


380  BLIND  ALLEY 

yet  so  much  as  I  can  love  anything,  I  love  you.  I've  al- 
ways dreamed  of  you.  You've  always  been  with  me  out 
there.  I  don't  know  if  I  believe  in  hell,  but  if  I  do  I'd  be 
damned  for  your  sake." 

"  Don't,"  said  Monica.    "  You  frighten  me." 

"Sorry.  I  can't  help  feeling  like  that.  But  won't 
you  answer  me?  " 

"  Don't  make  me.    I'm  so  afraid  of  life." 

He  leapt  to  his  feet.  "  Monica,  I  won't  say  any  more. 
I  don't  want  to  talk  about  these  things.  Let  me  go;  I 
don't  think  you'll  forget  me,  and  if  I  come  back  I'll  ask 
you  again." 

Monica  detained  his  hand.  "  Don't  think  hardly  of 
me.  I  don't  pretend  that  I  didn't  know  you  cared  for  me, 
but  nowadays  things  aren't  easy.  One  gets  frightened  of 
life.  Write  to  me.  I  like  your  letters."  Then  as  he 
bent  to  kiss  her  hand,  for  a  moment  she  caressed  his  harsh 
black  hair.  How  feverish  were  his  lips! 

She  thought  about  him  often  that  afternoon,  as  she 
shopped  with  Genevieve.  Hurn  formed  a  strange  back- 
ground, so  ravaged  and  uncertain,  to  the  smug  activities 
of  western  London.  She  went  with  her  cousin  to  buy 
tortoise-shell  fittings,  sweets;  a  splendid  non-coupon  en- 
tree was  supplied  by  Gunter;  they  went  to  two  milliners 
and  one  dressmaker ;  Monica  herself  spent  an  hour  over 
her  new  evening  frock  and  afternoon  dress  which  even 
the  war  season  made  necessary.  All  through  she  was 
conscious  of  artifice;  by  her  side,  as  by  Hum's,  went 
death,  and  all  men  seemed  ghosts. 

Her  impression  was  strengthened  that  night  at  the  lit- 
tle dinner  given  in  her  honour.  Just  Sir  Angus,  Gene- 
vieve, a  rather  sparkling  Frenchman,  called  Cadoresse, 
Lord  Arthur  Horton,  convalescent  now,  and  his  young 
wife,  pretty,  but  like  a  hard-mouthed  mare.  Everybody 


THE  LONE   GREY  COMPANY     381 

thought  that  General  Maurice  ought  to  be  court-mar- 
tialled  for  having  attacked  Lloyd-George. 

"  Who  cares,"  said  Sir  Angus,  "  whether  it  was  true  or 
not  that  Lloyd-George  thinned  the  front?  What's  done 
is  done.  And  who  cares  whether  those  mixed  divisions 
in  Palestine  contained  ninety-five  per  cent,  white  men  or 
only  ten?  In  war  time  there's  only  one  thing  to  be  done, 
to  hold  one's  tongue  and  get  a  move  on.  He  ought  to  be 
court-martialled." 

"  Oh,  well,"  said  Cadoresse,  "  he's  been  made  military 
critic  of  the  Daily  News.  You  don't  want  to  punish  the 
chap  any  more." 

The  party  raved  at  the  Daily  News,  including  Sir 
Angus,  who  said: 

"  I  never  read  the  rag,  but  I  know  it  ought  to  be  closed 
down." 

"  What  has  the  Daily  News  done?  "  asked  Monica,  for 
Cottenham  read  it  every  day,  so  she  felt  affection  for  it. 

The  whole  party  answered  together:  It  was  a  pro- 
German,  a  pacifist  paper,  a  lose-the-war  paper.  The  ed- 
itor was  a  pro-German.  The  editor  had  been  a  pro-Boer. 
The  editor  had  been  a  pro-Russian  in  '54.  He'd  backed  up 
Napoleon.  The  Daily  News  wasn't  formed  in  the  days 
of  Napoleon?  Oh,  well,  he  would  have  backed  up  Napo- 
leon. Anyhow  he  was  backing  up  the  Sinn  Feiners. 

"  Shoot  'em,"  said  Lord  Arthur  amiably.  "  It's  much 
simpler  than  trying  'em.  We  don't  try  Huns." 

Monica  was  heard  to  murmur  that  they  ought  not  to 
be  interned  without  trial. 

"You  forget,"  said  Cadoresse,  "that  if  we  tried  'em 
we  might  have  to  let  'em  go.  It's  just  a  case  of  benefit 
of  the  doubt,  and  in  war  time  one  has  to  keep  that  for 
oneself."  Then  he  reflected  that  Monica  was  very  pretty, 
and  coming  closer  began  to  talk  of  love. 


382  BLIND  ALLEY 

She  liked  him,  his  dark  eyes,  his  trim  moustache,  his 
way  of  being  serious  about  trifles  and  light  about  serious 
things.  He  reminded  her  of  Cottenham,  and  he  touched 
her  hand  when  he  offered  her  the  salted  almonds. 

Meanwhile  the  others  were  finishing  their  discussion  of 
the  Man  Power  Bill.  "  Rope  'em  all  in,"  said  Sir  Angus. 
"  There  are  plenty  of  fit  men  up  to  fifty-one.  They'll  be 
roping  me  in  next.  I'll  have  to  see  about  getting  a  brass 
hat.  That  is  if  they'll  let  me  leave  my  job.  Not  very 
likely,  with  things  in  the  state  they  are." 

They  talked  of  labour  unrest,  and  Sir  Angus  became 
vastly  confidential;  he  knew  of  strikes,  of  strikes  nipped 
in  the  bud  in  committee  rooms  by  the  production  of  call- 
ing-up  notices,  strikes  magnificently  settled  by  Asquith 
and  Lloyd-George,  settled  on  terms  which  the  strikers 
thought  excellent  until  they  came  to  understand  them.  It 
did  not  oc'cur  to  him  that  strikers  struck  again  only  be- 
cause their  rulers  deceived  them.  "  Still,"  he  said,  more 
seriously,  "  we  shan't  be  able  to  fox  'em  for  ever.  Too 
much  Bolshevism  about.  And  the  hidden  hand's  at  work. 
I  don't  know  what  our  people  are  up  to:  John  Bull  has 
just  published  a  list  of  Germans  naturalised  since  the 
war.  Simply  awful.  And  even  in  '16  we  naturalised 
crowds  of  them.  We's  just  asking  for  it.  We  let  Prin- 
cess Loewenstein  Wertheimer  register  under  a  false  name 
and  address  —  and  then  renaturalise.  We  let  her  visit 
Huns  in  internment  camps,  like  Mrs.  Leverton  Harris  — 
and  nothing  happens.  We  keep  Speyer  and  Cassel  on 
the  Privy  Council  —  we're  swarming  with  Germans  and 
Bolsheviks.  Then  we're  surprised  when  labour's  restless. 
It'll  end  in  a  grand  bust  up." 

"  Oh,"  said  Lord  Arthur,  "  aren't  you  laying  it  on  a  bit 
thick?  Of  course  a  war  like  this  is  bound  to  get  people's 
rag  out,  but  they'll  settle  down  all  right,  and  the  jolly  old 


THE  LONE   GREY  COMPANY     383 

world '11  toddle  along  as  usual.  The  real  trouble  is  the 
beer.  Somebody  the  other  day  laid  me  an  even  fiver 
that  I  wouldn't  drink  a  pint.  I  did,  but  I  wouldn't  do  it 
again  if  you  laid  me  ten  to  one  in  War  Saving  Certifi- 
cates." 

As  Monica  smiled  Cadoresse  whispered  to  her:  "  That 
young  man's  a  Bourbon;  he  has  learnt  nothing  and  for- 
gotten everything.  Your  ear  is  like  a  rosy  shell;  one 
would  like  to  listen  in  it  and  hear  the  murmur  -of  your 
soul." 

The  others  were  not  listening.  They  had  found  a  sub- 
ject for  hot  debate.  Was  it  a  pity  that  the  Air  Force  had 
assumed  the  blue  Hungarian  uniform?  Was  the  old 
khaki  better?  Some  thought  the  khaki  burlesque,  with 
its  military  colour  and  its  naval  cut.  Fancy  uniforms  for 
the  Air  Force  were  designed:  pink  ruffles  and  birds  of 
paradise  for  the  hat  secured  favour.  Lord  Arthur 
summed  up:  "Anyhow,  it's  all  very  well  raggin',  but 
the  latest  is  just  about  as  near  a  naval  uniform  as  can  be. 
I  call  that  a  naval  victory." 


XI 

IT  seemed  natural  to  see  him  standing  there,  outside 
Prince's,  his  blue  eyes  looking  out  over  the  traffic  of  Pic- 
cadilly into  some  realm  of  his  own,  where  moved  purely 
intellectual  ideas  round  facts  which  to  others  were  pas- 
sionate in  significance.  As  Monica  drew  closer,  the  old 
thrill  lived  again;  his  rather  short,  rather  square  shape 
contented  her,  his  neat  elegance,  and  the  dear  crispneis 
of  his  short  brown  hair  on  his  neck.  No,  she  couldn't 
bear  it,  and  looked  distractedly  at  the  slow-moving  omni- 
buses and  motor  cars.  She  couldn't  cross  the  road.  She 
stopped  for  a  second,  then  went  on.  She  couldn't  stop 


384  BLIND  ALLEY 

there  in  Piccadilly  until  he  went  away.  So  she  went  on: 
it  was  characteristic  of  Monica  that  it  did  not  occur  to 
her  to  turn  back.  She  went  no  further  in  cowardice  than 
to  hope  he  would  not  see  her  pass.  But,  and  he  did  not 
seem  surprised,  their  eyes  met  as  she  drew  abreast.  She 
stopped.  He  took  off  his  hat.  They  shook  hands.  Mar- 
vellously they  were  walking  westward,  side  by  side.  After 
a  time  he  said: 

"  How  are  you?  " 

"I'm  all  right,  thanks."  Then:  "Are  you  staying  in 
town  long?  " 

"  No,  only  to-day.  I've  got  a  conference  at  five  and 
must  get  back  after  dinner." 

Monica  smiled  to  herself.  "After  dinner!  I  wonder 
whether  Julia  believes  that."  She  felt  humorous  and 
hard. 

"  I  suppose,"  he  said,  "  you're  up  for  the  season,  what 
there's  left  of  it." 

"  No,  I  shan't  be  here  long  either.  My  father  will  be 
up  to-morrow  or  the  day  after,  and  we're  going  back  to 
Knapenden  this  week." 

He  was  uneasy.  He  threw  her  a  sideways  glance.  How 
adorable  was  her  thin  gracefulness.  Her  open  coat 
showed  a  blouse  pale  cinnamon  in  colour.  So  tender  and 
so  white.  "  Look  out !  "  cried  the  familiar  in  his  heart. 
"Be  light.  Talk  of  anything.  Talk  of  her  people.  Frank, 
old  chap,  talk,  and  at  the  next  tube  station  dive."  So 
Cottenham  said: 

"  I  suppose  you  miss  your  father  up  here.  You're  very 
fond  of  him,  aren't  you?  He  matters  more  to  you  than 
your  mother." 

"  Yes,  I  suppose  so."  Monica  grew  reflective,  and  it  did 
not  surprise  her  to  find  herself  easily  confidential.  One 
was  —  with  him.  "  Mother,"  she  said,  "  you  see,  mother 


THE   LONE   GREY  COMPANY     385 

doesn't  take  the  war  off  one.  She's  so  imperial.  The 
other  day  I  came  across  Kipling's  dream,  in  a  story  called 
'  His  Private  Honour.'  His  idea  is  a  special  territorial 
army  for  India,  enlisted  for  twelve  years,  allowed  to 
marry,  so  that  their  children  may  yield  more  white  sol- 
diers. And  then  a  larger  army  to  colonise  India,  to  hire 
warships  from  us  to  guard  Aden  and  Singapore  —  a 
sort  of  vision  of  India  paying  interest  on  her  loans,  colo- 
nising and  manufacturing,  making  empire  —  empire  for 
empire's  sake.  Mother's  like  that,  weapons  —  it's  rather 
hard  to  live  with  when  one  feels  different." 

He  nodded.  "  Yes,  I  understand.  It's  a  metallic 
world  we're  making.  I  see  the  metal  turned  every  day 
into  machines.  The  metal  is  getting  into  our  system. 
We're  the  slaves  of  metal,  gold,  and  steel  —  gold  with 
which  to  buy  steel,  steel  with  which  to  steal  gold.  And 
it's  spreading.  Every  bureaucrat  tries  to  be  a  man  of 
steel;  mostly  he's  a  man  of  pig-iron.  Still  metal.  Talk 
about  efficiency,  and  dress  up  political  theft  as  the  neces- 
sity of  the  situation.  The  times  that  are  coming  will  be 
much  the  same,  but  more  so.  If  we  win  this  war  we'll 
want  to  maintain  the  qualities  that  won  it:  ruthlessness, 
organization,  business  capacity;  and  if  we  lose  we'll  want 
to  acquire  those  qualities  to  get  our  revenge.  New  gods, 
godgetit,  godgrabit,  goddoemdown.  What  a  pantheon! 
No  room  for  Aphrodite  and  her  inexpensive  mirror  of  the 
sea." 

She  listened.  She  did  not  love  him,  she  had  never  loved 
him.  Not  entirely,  because  he  had  not  loved  her.  But 
she  liked  his  words.  After  a  time  they  grew  silent  and 
did  not  speak  again  until  instinctively  they  turned  into 
St.  James  Park.  Then,  irrelevantly,  he  said: 

"  I  taught  you  to  feel." 

"  Yes,"  said  Monica,  "  it's  no  good  to  me.    I'm  glad 


386  BLIND   ALLEY 

you  did.  I  haven't  hated  you.  But  what's  the  good? 
You  said  we'd  come  to  a  blind  alley.  And  you  talk  as  if 
all  the  world  had  done  so  too." 

"  Perhaps  it  has.  Perhaps  this  war,  all  this  desire  for 
conquest,  all  this  struggling  for  the  right,  is  producing 
only  another  world  the  same  as  the  old  one.  Same  hate, 
same  love,  same  material  desires,  same  vain  spiritual 
aspirations.  Pushing  frontier  posts  about,  and  the  same 
rivers  flowing  unperturbed  under  new  flags.  Striving  and 
killing,  just  to  push  along  a  road  without  an  end,  a  blind 
alley  right  enough."  They  walked  on  silently.  They 
were  not  unhappy;  round  them  London  June  burnt 
radiant;  couples  lay  embraced  upon  the  grass.  An  ex- 
quisite melancholy  ran  through  both.  Both  wondered 
whether  things  could  become  as  they  had  been,  and  both 
knew  they  never  had  been.  That  hurt,  and  Monica  found 
her  eyes  wet.  He  touched  her  arm,  but  she  shook  him 
off.  She  blinked  her  eyes  free  of  tears.  Here  was  Hyde 
Park  Corner.  One  couldn't  cry  at  Hyde  Park  Corner. 

"Monica,"  said  Cottenham,  bravely  holding  out  his 
hand  and  for  a  moment  pressing  hers,  "  it's  very  hard. 
We  couldn't  get  enough  out  of  life,  you  and  I.  Life  is  a 
bad  debtor.  You  mustn't  expect  her  to  pay  in  full.  If 
you're  lucky  she  may  compound  with  you  and  pay  part 
of  her  debt  on  the  instalment  plan.  But  it's  no  use  press- 
ing her;  if  you  do  she'll  file  her  petition  in  bankruptcy. 
She's  a  cynic." 

A  newsboy  passed  the  Park  gate.  As  he  ran  he  shouted: 
"  Germans  on  the  Marne!  Germans  on  the  Marne!  " 

"  I  expect  Paris  will  fall,"  said  Cottenham,  as  he  took 
off  his  hat. 

He  was  gone.  Monica  tried  in  vain  to  understand 
what  made  her  so  unhappy. 


THE   LONE   GREY   COMPANY     387 

XII 

THE  news  seemed  to  Sir  Hugh  less  horrible  than  in- 
credible. Ever  since  the  end  of  March  he  had  watched 
the  Allied  line  bend,  believing  and  refusing  to  believe  that 
it  would  break.  It  had  not  broken,  and  every  time  hope 
had  risen  again.  Every  time  the  Germans  drove  in  the 
Allies,  and  then  stopped,  he  thought:  "  This  is  the  last 
time."  Then,  as  always,  we  bent  and  bent.  He  ceased  to 
care :  that  was  the  course  of  the  war ;  we  must  bend.  And 
we  could  not  react.  He  no  longer  thought  of  counter-offen- 
sives; he  had  come,  like  a  child  that  has  been  beaten,  to 
wait  for  the  next  blow.  Now  they  were  on  the  Marne, 
they  were  over  the  Marne,  and  that  river  was  to  him 
historic,  so  once  again  fear  and  anxiety  overwhelmed  his 
growing  indifference.  He  wondered  whether  this  were 
the  end,  whether  those  grey  legions  would  at  last  swarm 
westwards,  take  Paris,  bring  down  the  shining  edifice  of 
British  ambition.  His  mind  was  in  a  state  of  rout.  It 
served  little  that  the  Austrians  were  broken  on  the  Piave; 
he  could  see  only  what  was  close,  hear  the  sound  of  no 
guns  other  than  those  whose  voices  now  and  then  rumbled 
across  Udimore  Down.  We  were  being  beaten,  and  by 
an  enemy  without  mercy,  without  cleanness  of  object; 
here  was  Hertling,  not  even  pretending  that  Germany 
would  build  a  world  richer  in  justice  and  freer  of  strife; 
and  Sir  Hugh  knew  quite  well  that  our  own  ruling  class 
despised  and  denied  Wilson's  ideal,  that  they  hated  the 
League  of  Nations,  that  they  would  almost  rather  have 
a  peace  of  violence  made  at  their  expense  than  abandon 
the  chance  of  themselves  making  a  peace  of  violence.  All 
those  people,  generals,  financiers,  politicians,  —  they  were 
like  his  wife  and  knew  no  argument  save  force.  The 
Germans,  of  whom  a  year  before  he  had  hoped  something, 


388  BLIND   ALLEY 

a  stable  settlement,  had,  the  first  hint  of  victory,  thrown 
away  their  resounding  principles,  knelt  on  prostrate  Rus- 
sia and  picked  her  pockets.  Now  they  were  winning,  and 
the  Germans  had  not  the  decency  even  to  be  hypocrites; 
once  again  their  newspapers  were  filled  with  the  lustful 
cries  of  pan-Germanism;  once  again  they  talked  of  an- 
nexing (in  the  new,  canting,  purely  commercial  way) 
Belgium  and  Northern  France,  colonies  the  world  over, 
of  punitive  indemnities  destined  to  make  of  the  Allies 
vassals  or  beggared  conquests. 

His  mind  took  a  turn.  And  what  of  us?  Were  we 
any  better  morally  —  who  were  inferior  intellectually? 
Had  we  shown  a  sign  of  sympathy  with  liberty?  Had  we 
not  left  the  young  Russia  of  Kerensky  to  struggle  against 
the  Germans  in  her  poverty  and  chaos?  Had  we  not 
refused  to  state  our  war  aims?  Had  we  not  favoured 
Korniloff,  a  reactionary  general?  Kaledin,  a  reactionary 
general?  Favoured  anybody  who  was  against  the  new 
socialist  democracy,  deserted  anybody  whom  our  Tory 
journals  chose  to  libel?  Had  we  not  ground  the  face  of 
Russian  labour  as  we  tried  to  grind  our  own?  Had  we 
not  used  to  the  fullest  of  our  meanness  our  power  to  re- 
fuse passports  to  the  labour  men  —  just  to  prevent  labour 
men  from  discussing  the  business  of  the  world  and  keep 
them  at  the  under-dog  rank?  And  had  we  not  sent  mis- 
sions into  Ukraine  to  plot,  to  bribe,  to  war  against  those 
Bolsheviks  whose  every  speech  and  decree  we  garbled  or 
suppressed,  whose  purposes  we  travestied,  to  whom  we 
attributed  burlesque  marriage  laws,  whom  we  falsely 
charged,  charged  without  evidence,  with  causing  blood- 
shed, those  men  who  after  all  had  maintained  some  sort  of 
state  already  for  ten  months?  We  had  never  sent  a  rifle  or 
a  penny  to  young  Russia  when  she  was  fighting  Germany ; 
now  we  were  ready  to  send  division  after  division,  chests 


THE   LONE   GREY  COMPANY     389 

of  gold,  cargoes  of  lyddite  to  old  Russia  who  was  fighting 
the  new  —  and  nearly  all  our  press  was  yapping  and 
snarling,  clamouring  for  a  Japanese  invasion  of  wretched 
Russia,  not  only  to  restore  order,  that  is  to  restore 
tyranny,  but  for  the  sake  of  revenge,  because  we  wanted 
the  Bolsheviks  to  suffer,  because  men  openly  said:  "  Turn 
the  Japs  on  'em,  they'll  show  'em."  All  that  because  they 
had  committed  the  crime  of  hating  war !  We  wanted  re- 
venge. 

Sir  Hugh  saw  England  living  through  a  terror  of  the 
soul.  She  had  thrown  over  her  old  chivalric  ideas;  in 
the  hour  of  her  need  she  found  decency  didn't  pay,  and 
grew  determined  to  be  decent  only  if  it  paid.  To  the 
sound  of  her  new  war  cry:  A  Bolo!  a  Bolo!  "  at  the 
behest  of  the  Billings  and  Bottomleys  who  crowded  her 
music-halls,  her  railway  carriages  and  especially  her 
Kensington  drawing-rooms,  she  was  asking  for  the  re- 
vision of  naturalisation  certificates,  that  was  for  the  dis- 
honouring of  her  notes  of  hand.  The  world  was  upside 
down;  blunt  England  had  made  secret  treaties;  Lloyd- 
George,  ex-Radical,  was  accepting  Protection;  the  parti- 
sans of  free  labour  were  establishing  an  embargo  on  the 
right  of  skilled  men  to  move  from  firm  to  firm  —  they 
were  building  a  world  armed  and  tariffed,  a  world  which 
delighted  in  hostility  and  hated  Wilson,  Wilson,  the  only 
hope  of  civilisation,  because  he  wanted  to  tear  their 
weapons  from  their  bloody  hands  and  unite  them  in  a 
league  of  peace  that  had  no  respect  for  the  vested  inter- 
ests in  slaughter.  Yes,  in  America  lay  the  only  hope. 
They,  the  youngest  children  of  the  world,  were  not  bound 
close  by  the  bonds  of  hatred  on  which  the  old  Empire  had 
been  nurtured.  No  doubt  they  too  had  their  covetous- 
ness,  their  flaunting  Roosevelts,  their  greedy  Rockefellers 
—  but  they  had  moral  dreams;  they  were  not  the  slaves 


390  BLIND   ALLEY 

of  cocked  hats,  orders,  epaulets,  flags,  aiguillettes,  the 
things  for  which  men  die.  Wilson  expressed  all  that, 
that  desire  to  establish  a  stable  world,  where  the  indi- 
vidual would  be  free  from  the  quarrels  of  State. 

As  he  walked  along  the  Haymarket,  the  day  was  still 
brilliant.  The  pale,  bright  sunset  of  London  coloured  her 
in  rose.  The  crowd  round  him  was  young ;  how  clean  and 
straight  were  these  young  men  in  khaki  and  blue!  And 
how  the  women's  eyes  shone!  A  sudden  revelation  in- 
vaded Sir  Hugh:  people  like  that,  bright  young  people, 
they  must  be  the  victims  of  what  was  happening,  they 
could  not  be  its  authors;  were  there  crowds  like  this  in 
Berlin?  Very  likely.  Then  he  remembered  his  few 
journeys  to  Germany.  No,  they  were  not  like  that;  they 
were  thicker,  coarser ;  they  had  idealism,  but  not  the  quiet, 
profound  emotion  of  the  English,  their  lovely,  ironic 
lightness,  which  does  not  strike  deep  and  bitter  as  it  does 
in  the  French.  Oh,  this  England,  she  was  the  gigantic 
nursery  of  the  world,  and  if  all  these  babies  went  blunder- 
ing about,  smashing  things,  banging  their  heads  against 
corners,  and  unreasonably  yelling  about  it;  if  at  the  sight 
of  any  toy  they  shouted,  "  mine !  mine  ",  and  if  they 
grabbed  at  the  other  children's  toys,  and  hit  them  in  the 
eye  when  they  wouldn't  hand  them  over  —  well,  that  was 
the  way  of  children  who  by  and  by  would  grow  up  into 
fine  men.  Suddenly  he  loved  them ;  he  realised  that  their 
crimes  were  born  of  their  innocence.  "  Oh,"  he  thought, 
"  Billy  Bridge  was  right  when  he  said  that  in  a  dog  fight 
one  may  as  well  see  to  it  that  one's  dog  wins.  Beautiful, 
sinful  England!  No,  not  sinful;  beautiful  England  gone 
astray  like  a  petulant,  selfish  maiden,  whom  Prince 
Charming  has  not  yet  kissed  into  womanhood ;  oh,  beau- 
tiful England  who  can  be  so  foolish,  so  hard,  so  mean, 
because  you  are  so  young,  and  strong  in  the  desires  of 


THE  LONE   GREY  COMPANY     391 

youth,  and  in  whose  breast  lies  buried  deep  the  love  of 
justice,  the  capacity  for  mercy,  the  instinct  of  comrade- 
ship, you  have  not  yet  written  your  history.  Beautiful 
England,  you  will  still  break  many  eggs  before  you  make 
the  omelette  of  the  universe,  but  I  must  love  you,  and  love 
you,  because  only  love,  crude  minx  with  a  heart  of  gold, 
can  teach  you  to  love;  to  make  you  mine  I  must  first  of 
all  become  yours." 

Sir  Hugh  did  not  at  once  go  back  to  Ashley  Gardens. 
His  mood  was  too  elevated.  He  wanted  to  embrace  the 
city,  to  soak  himself  in  her  loveliness.  He  turned  into 
Leicester  Square,  pleased  with  the  crowd,  which  in  com- 
radeship jostled  him.  He  liked  the  warmth,  the  familiar 
contacts.  A  young  couple  passed  him,  close-linked,  eyes 
in  eyes;  rough  New  Zealand  soldiers,  with  the  beautiful 
profiles  of  copper  coins,  stood  serious  at  a  corner;  a 
woman  spoke  to  him: 

"Hello,  darling  —  all  on  your  lonesome  —  oh,  sir!  " 

He  looked  up.  It  was  Westcott.  He  did  not  start. 
He  understood,  but  all  men  were  ghosts  that  night.  The 
girl  flushed  scarlet.  She  averted  her  pretty  blue  eyes. 
She  was  delightfully  dressed;  Sir  Hugh  carried  away  a 
vague  picture  of  waved  chestnut  hair,  a  low-cut  creamy 
blouse,  a  soft  white  breast,  pretty  gloved  hands  that 
dangled  a  gold  bag.  Westcott  looked  successful  rather 
than  wild.  He  was  hardly  conscious  of  her  tragedy;  it 
was  vaguely  he  asked  whether  he  could  help  her  in  any 
way. 

"  Oh,  no,  sir.  Thank  you.  It's  too  late.  Besides,  I'm 
all  right.  Thank  you."  She  half  put  out  her  hand,  then 
withdrew  it  as  if  ashamed.  Through  her  despairing  em- 
barrassment, Westcott's  professionalism  found  a  way. 

"  Good-by-ee,"  she  said  jauntily,  and  was  gone. 

Sir  Hugh  had  almost  forgotten  her  when  he  reached 


392  BLIND   ALLEY 

the  Bomb  Shop  in  Charing  Cross  Road.  An  unaccount- 
able affection  had  grown  in  him  for  this  shop  where  a 
gentle  old  bookseller,  who  looked  like  a  moth  which  dur- 
ing the  chrysalis  stage  had  sustained  its  life  on  an 
exclusive  diet  of  abstract  thought,  dispensed  books  and 
newspapers,  and  all  the  most  audacious  ideas.  He  often 
spent  a  long  time  at  the  counters,  where  crowded  Shaw, 
Carpenter,  Tchekoff,  all  the  plays  and  all  the  poems  that 
have  inflamed  man,  the  socialists,  the  anarchists,  the  dis- 
contented and  the  hopeful,  the  sweet  idealists,  the  bitter 
rebels.  To  Sir  Hugh,  in  these  days,  the  Bomb  Shop  was 
an  island  of  love  and  hope;  there  he  found  the  books  that 
are  true  optimism,  for  they  did  not  aspire  to  make  the 
best  of  an  evil  world,  but  to  turn  it  into  a  better  one. 
Sometimes  he  talked  to  the  old  bookseller,  who  did  not 
treat  him  like  a  customer  but  like  a  comrade.  That 
night  the  bookseller  was  tying  up  parcels,  and  Sir  Hugh 
wanted  to  talk  to  him  about  the  destiny  of  man.  The 
old  man  listened,  busy  with  paper  and  string.  His  lips 
were  young  and  smiling  in  his  grey  beard,  his  eyes  soft. 
He  said: 

"What  a  pity  they've  built  across  the  way.  If  it 
weren't  for  that  we'd  have  the  sunset  in  the  shop  every 
night."  He  laughed:  "  Though  I  don't  know  if  it  wouldn't 
be  nicer  if  the  shop  faced  the  other  way,  because  then 
it's  the  sunrise  would  come  in." 

XIII 

THE  old  pony  trotted  sulkily  along  the  military  road. 
He  hated  that  road;  it  hurt  his  hoofs.  As  he  picked  his 
way,  looking  for  soft  places,  from  time  to  time  tossing 
his  head  in  that  way  half  bad-tempered,  half  sportive, 
that  is  the  charm  of  his  kind,  the  pony  began  to  form  a 


THE  LONE   GREY   COMPANY     393 

profound  plan:  he  would  not  hurry.  He  realised  that  he 
might  not  at  once  be  allowed  to  walk,  but  having  experi- 
mented with  a  decreasingly  slow  trot,  he  gently  swerved 
towards  the  left,  where  grew  nice,  soft,  smelly  turf  —  the 
hands  on  the  reins  did  not  seem  to  mind,  and  so,  more 
and  more  slowly,  he  jogged  along,  conscious  of  immense 
cunning. 

Stephen  was  that  morning  meditative.  By  his  side 
sat  Louise  whom  he  was  driving  in  from  the  New  Hospi- 
tal. She  had  begun  with  small  talk,  and,  finding  him 
aloof,  had  responded  to  his  mood.  He  was  grateful, 
though  he  did  not  know  it.  They  were  still  silent  as  they 
crossed  the  railway  and  turned  up  the  rise  towards  the 
ridge.  His  eyes  roved  over  the  fields  that  now  were 
stained  with  flowers,  stray  bladder-campion,  ox-eye 
daisies;  along  the  ditches  tiny  red  pimpernel,  and  speed- 
well, blue  and  demure.  Louise  looked  away  from  him, 
showing  no  sign  of  awareness,  as  if  she  were  basking  in 
the  heat  of  the  June  day.  But  no  awkwardness  lay 
between  them ;  they  had  achieved  the  ideal  of  companion- 
ship, were  together,  yet  not  compelled  to  mutual  enter- 
tainment. 

The  pony  went  slower  and  slower,  sometimes  nuzzling 
his  knees  with  a  black,  aggrieved  muzzle.  Now  and  then 
he  gave  a  tug  at  his  collar,  that  said:  "  Damn  this  hill." 
He  thought  of  stopping  for  a  moment,  as  he  caught  sight 
of  a  stray  patch  of  clover,  then  decided  to  stop  only  at 
the  top.  He  did  so,  and  without  concealment  planted  his 
fore  feet  on  the  edge  of  the  ditch  and  began  to  browse  the 
hanging  boughs  of  the  hazels. 

Stephen  considered  for  a  moment  the  pony's  fat  back, 
then  turned  to  Louise  and  said: 

"  Will  you  marry  me?  " 

Louise  did  not  reply  for  a  moment.    She  sat  as  if  un- 


394  BLIND  ALLEY 

stirred,  her  negligent  hands  closed  over  a  handkerchief. 
The  long  black  lashes  made  shadows  on  the  pale  skin. 
Stephen  said: 

"  You  don't  reply.  I'm  not  surprised.  It's  cheek  of 
me,  I  suppose,  a  crock  like  me.  Oh,  I  don't  mean  my 
leg.  But  lots  of  people  think  I'm  a  lunatic." 

She  smiled. 

"  Perhaps  I  am  a  lunatic,  but  I  went  out  a  patriot.  You 
don't  mind,  do  you  —  I  know  I  say  queer  things.  I've 
stopped  thinking  what  I  used  to  think  at  Eton,  if  that  was 
thinking.  No,  I  know  you  don't  mind.  That's  just  what 
there  is  about  you,  Louise:  you  never  mind.  You're  above 
it,  like  Kallikrates.  But  you  haven't  answered  me." 

"  I'm  three  years  older  than  you  are.  I'm  twenty- 
seven." 

"  I'm  fifty.    Four  years  of  hell,  hell  ..." 

She  laid  her  hand  upon  his  arm.  "  Don't  talk  about  it, 
Stephen;  you  know  it's  not  good  for  you." 

"  Four  years  of  hell,"  he  said  again,  "  and  no  heaven 
made  out  of  it.  Oh,  I'm  old  enough,  don't  you  worry. 
Question  is  whether  I'm  too  old,  whether  it's  fair  to  ask 
you  to  marry  me.  But  then  that's  nonsense;  you're  not 
young  or  old;  you're  like  the  water  lilies,  with  long,  old 
roots  and  young  flowers.  You're  eternal.  And  I  need 
you." 

The  girl  hesitated,  then  put  an  arm  about  his  shoulders 
and  drew  his  head  down  to  her  breast.  Then,  in  a  voice 
so  low  that  he  could  hardly  hear  it,  but  intense  as  if  she 
absorbed  him  into  her  being,  she  said :  "  Yes,  Stephen  — 
why,  of  course  —  always,  always,  since  we  were  children." 
Bending  over  him,  she  kissed  his  cheek,  and  so  stayed 
until,  with  masculine  restlessness,  he  turned  to  clasp  her 
and  kiss  her  lips. 

That  night,  as  they  sat  upon  the  south  terrace,  Louise 


THE  LONE   GREY  COMPANY     395 

at  first  was  censorious.  "  You  know,  you  shouldn't  irri- 
tate your  mother  like  that.  She  takes  the  war  hard  —  oh, 
not  harder  than  you,  but  differently." 

"  What  have  I  done?  " 

"  Well,  you  shouldn't  talk  to  her  at  all  about  the  war, 
to  begin  with.  Think  of  what  you  said  about  the  Czecho- 
slovaks." 

"  Let  me  see,  what  did  I  say?  One  says  such  a  lot  of 
things  to  mother,  just  for  the  fun  of  it.  Oh,  yes.  Well, 
what's  the  harm  of  my  having  said  that  the  gallant 
Czecho-Slovaks  had  shot  more  workmen  and  peasants  in 
Ukraine  than  the  Bolsheviks  had  shot  bourgeois." 

"  Yes.    Why  did  you  say  that?  " 

"  It's  true." 

"What  does  it  matter  if  it's  true  if  it  irritates  your 
mother?  " 

Stephen  laughed.  "  I  say,  when  we're  married,  shan't 
I  be  able  to  say  true  things  to  you  if  they  irritate  you?  " 

"  Oh,"  said  Louise  loftily,  "  that  sort  of  thing  doesn't 
irritate  me." 

"  Upon  my  word,"  said  Stephen,  "  I  believe  you're  the 
only  one  who's  escaped  the  war.  Do  you  read  the  war 
news?  " 

"  Well,  one  has  to  read  the  war  news." 

"  But  I  mean  really  read.  Do  you  know  the  difference 
between  Przemysl  and  chemise?  " 

"  Chemises?  "  said  Louise  vaguely.  "  I  wasn't  talking 
about  chemises." 

Stephen  drew  his  arm  tighter  about  her  waist  and  said: 
"  You're  simply  ripping.  You  sit  there  while  half  the 
world  is  slaughtering  itself,  and  the  other  half  hotting  it 
up  to  go  on,  and  a  few  thousand  people  holding  a  few 
thousand  committees  about  it  —  and  they  go  on  shearing 
the  sheep,  and  Farcet  cobbles  his  boots,  while  the  elder- 


396  BLIND  ALLEY 

tree  turns  flat,  white  blossoms  to  the  sun,  and  you  just 
bloom  on.  Talk  of  a  tonic !  Talk  of  a  sedative !  In  the 
middle  of  a  chaos  like  this,  which  is  not  spreading  through 
a  mere  war,  but  is  affecting  ordinary  life,  you're  a  sort  of 
chorus,  not  exactly  of  optimism  but  permanency ;  a  pretty 
chorus  to  a  weeping  world.  Here  are  all  the  ranks  of 
life  jumbled  up,  and  you  don't  get  jumbled  up.  There 
you  are  like  the  Albert  Memorial.  I  wonder  what  you'll 
be  like  in  twenty  years,  when  the  new  generation  has  been 
educated  in  the  new  way.  Education's  going  to  be  a 
grand  stunt  after  the  war.  We've  discovered  that  though 
we  may  have  won  Waterloo  on  the  playing  fields  of  Eton, 
on  those  same  fields  we  lost  the  battle  of  Loos.  And 
there's  going  to  be  a  cry  for  ousting  Latin  and  Greek,  and 
setting  up  instead  wood- carving,  bookkeeping  and  poker 
work.  They're  going  to  popularise  the  universities  by 
making  them  popular  with  the  people  who  preferred  the 
Polytechnic,  and  will  do  nothing  to  popularise  the  Poly- 
technic among  the  people  who  preferred  the  'Varsity. 
We're  going  to  establish  continuation  schools  to  finish  an 
education  which  was  never  begun.  We  had  an  education 
which,  at  the  price  of  a  pound  of  effort,  taught  a  man  to 
earn  a  shilling  and  to  enjoy  nineteen;  we're  going  to  cre- 
ate one  which  will  enable  him  to  earn  five  shillings  and 
enjoy  fifteen;  we  shall  strive  through  the  century  on 
that  road  of  new  idealism  until  every  pound  of  effort 
teaches  him  to  earn  a  pound  and  to  enjoy  nothing  at  all. 
For  six  hundred  years  we've  made  men  without  minds; 
soon  we  shall  be  making  minds  without  manhood.  For 
Latin  and  Greek  we  shall  begin  by  substituting  literature, 
English,  history,  law;  science  and  commerce  will  bolt  the 
rest.  In  another  generation  the  cry  against  literature  and 
history  will  be  the  same  as  the  one  to-day  against  Latin 
and  Greek,  and  they,  in  their  turn,  will  be  displaced  by 


THE  LONE  GREY  COMPANY  397 

the  soul-making  art  of  the  plumber  and  the  master  sweep. ' 
And  it'll  pay  in  everything  except  terms  of  life,  for  Life 
Ltd.,  oh,  very  limited,  is  the  only  joint-stock  company  in 
which  we  all  have  shares,  and  the  best  balance  sheet  it 
shows  is  when  there  is  no  dividend.  In  those  days  they 
won't  know  that  Life  Ltd.  can't  pay  dividends  but  only 
increase  its  capital.  And  so  the  dear  old  thing'll  go  into 
liquidation." 

"  I  don't  know  what  you're  talking  about,"  said  Louise. 

"  It  doesn't  matter.    Does  it?  " 

"  Not  a  bit,  if  only  you  don't  get  excited.  It's  not  good 
for  you." 

"  I'm  not  excited.  I  wish  you  wouldn't  fuss  over  me. 
But  hang  it  all,  why  aren't  you  optimistic?  What's  the 
good  of  my  saying  all  this  if  you  aren't  up  against  me? 
I'd  better  go  and  talk  to  mother." 

Louise  laughed  low  into  the  darkness. 

"No,  I  shall  not  talk  to  mother.  She'd  start  on  the 
Czecho-Slovaks  again  and  I'd  rather  start  on  the  New 
World.  That's  about  the  last  thing  she  wants.  No,  I'm 
unfair.  Mother  does  want  a  new  world.  I  found  a  bit 
of  her  new  world  this  morning  in  a  little  book  I  picked 
up  on  a  bookstall,  called:  '  The  Great  Thoughts  of  Hora- 
tio Bottomley.'  I  remember  a  bit  of  mother's  new  world. 
It  runs  something  like  this:  '.  .  .  a  promised  land  of 
humanity,  when  the  streets  shall  be  paved  with  gold  and 
which  shall  flow  with  milk  and  honey.  In  other  words,  a 
land  in  which  there  shall  be  no  Germans  —  a  clean  land, 
God's  land! '  You  know,  Louise,  that  sort  of  thing  must 
make  even  the  British  Empire  think.  I  wonder  why  we 
don't  adopt  '  Gott  mit  unsf  '  We've  stuck  to  '  Ich  dien.' 
And  yet,  in  spite  of  all  that,  all  this  flapdoodle  about 
making  a  new  world,  which  originates  exclusively  among 
the  people  who'd  rather  go  to  hell  than  live  in  a  new 


398  BLIND  ALLEY 

world,  we've  got  to  make  a  new  world,  make  a  new  world 
without  frontiers  —  Idealism!  I  might  as  well  talk  of 
making  a  new  town  without  garden  walls.  The  chief  oc- 
cupation of  humanity  seems  to  be  to  throw  dead  cats 
over  the  garden  wall  and  patriotic  insults  over  the  fron- 
tiers. And  still,  in  spite  of  that,  in  spite  of  all  this  ten- 
dency to  wrangle  and  to  row,  we've  got  to  make  a  new 
world  where  will  be  no  rival  kings,  no  rival  ambassadors, 
no  rival  capitalists,  in  other  words,  no  big  bugs.  It's  the 
big  bug  made  this  war.  The  little  bugs,  poor  things,  they 
came  out  of  their  holes  when  they  were  called.  I  hate 
Labour,  probably  because  I've  done  it  down.  Me  and 
my  class.  I've  got  their  land,  and  I've  got  their  money, 
which  is  nothing,  but  I've  got  their  education,  and  their 
good  breeding,  and  their  leisure.  Well,  the  new  world 
has  got  to  disperse  those  clots,  do  away  with  old  John 
Jesmond,  who  sits  upon  the  bench  and  blows  because  he's 
overfed,  do  away  with  Uncle  Angus  who  sits  in  his  club 
and  blows  because  he's  over-flattered.  And  I'm  afraid  it 
must  do  away  with  mother,  who  sits  upon  father  and 
blows  because  she's  got  power.  The  new  world  will  have 
to  keep  a  standing  army  of  people  who  are  neat  with  the 
harpoon,  and  whenever  they  see  a  whale,  push  it  in:  that'll 
learn  it  to  blow.  We've  got  to  get  rid  of  wealth,  and 
rank,  and  good  manners,  and  decent  clothes,  and  art,  and 
beauty,  and  religion  —  make  a  clean  sweep  and  get  the 
world  down  to  a  decent  uniformity  of  a  pound  of  bread 
a  day  and  one  hat  per  head.  We've  got  to  start  again 
from  the  level  of  intellectual  barbarism.  Got  to  break 
up  this  society  that's  gone  bad;  it's  past  mending.  And, 
by  Lenine  and  by  Trotsky!  I  swear  that  it  had  better 
be  ended  and  never  begun  again." 

After  a  moment  Louise  said:  "Yes,  dear.    You  must 
come  in  now.    The  mist  is  beginning  to  rise." 


THE  LONE   GREY   COMPANY     399 

Obediently,  his  arm  round  her  shoulder  and  playing 
with  her  soft  curls,  he  went  into  the  house. 

XIV 

THE  fall  of  Kuhlmann  precipitated  Sir  Hugh  deeper 
into  his  reactions.  The  German  Foreign  Secretary  had 
been  to  him  a  temporary  idol,  for  as  he  swung  away  from 
his  own  ruling  class,  his  tradition  as  a  member  of  that 
ruling  class  drew  him  towards  another  one.  He  was  a 
gentleman  and  it  did  not  then  occur  to  him  to  turn  to  the 
people.  But  when  the  treaties  of  Brest-Litovsk  and 
Bucharest  suddenly  revealed  to  him  the  German  autocrat 
as  insatiable  in  his  ambition,  limitless  in  his  greed,  when 
they  showed  him  Ballin  and  the  German  capitalists  un- 
restrainable  in  their  avarice,  when  they  showed  him  the 
German  Parliament  fawning  in  sulky  slavery  at  its  mas- 
ter's feet,  he  threw  over  the  ruling  class  of  the  world.  It 
took  him  three  months  to  realise  this ;  he  was  one  of  those 
English,  liberal-minded  men  who,  to  the  end  of  their  days, 
voted  for  the  conservatives;  even  now  he  might  have 
hesitated  to  support  roadmender  Smith  against  Lord  X. 
But,  during  those  months,  driven  by  a  desire  to  find  some- 
thing positive  on  which  to  hang  hope,  he  had  saturated 
himself  with  advanced  literature.  Books  and  pamphlets 
from  the  Bomb  Shop  already  made  his  study  a  vast,  dusty 
litter;  thus  he  read,  one  after  the  other,  Marx's  "Capital", 
some  Kropotkin,  the  Cambridge  Magazine,  week  by  week, 
The  Plebs  and  The  Masses,  from  America ;  in  his  welter- 
ing mind  hurtled  the  mechanical  millennium  of  the  Fabian 
Society,  the  dreams  of  Eugene  Debs,  books  about  war  and 
factories  translated  from  the  Russian,  which  seemed  to 
him  written  by  epileptics  —  and,  to  make  his  confusion 
complete,  patriotic  defenses  of  the  war  by  men  like 


400  BLIND  ALLEY 

Blatehford,  Will  Thorne,  Hyndman,  who  once  had  made 
war  against  war  their  version  of  peace,  and  virile  effusions 
by  Gompers,  who  seemed  to  him  to  represent  the  solid 
earth  of  trade-unionism,  on  which  socialists,  anarchists, 
guildsmen,  syndicalists,  were  together  trying  to  build  on 
the  same  spot  the  castle  of  the  future,  every  one  of  them 
with  a  different  kind  of  brick. 

He  was  in  chaos.  He  was  like  a  small  boy  in  the  large 
schoolroom  of  1850  who  tried  to  absorb  Latin  from  his 
master,  while  the  teacher  of  mathematics  was  bellowing 
at  the  boy  on  the  next  form.  Unable  to  find  in  these  as- 
pirations an  obviously  common  purpose,  he  found  them 
difficult  to  support:  strive  as  he  might  Sir  Hugh  could 
not  help  having  been  a  banker  for  twenty  years  and  being 
a  practical  man.  That  is  to  say,  he  was  not  interested  in 
an  object  unless  he  could  clearly  see  the  road  by  which  it 
might  be  attained.  The  intellectuals  did  not  satisfy  him ; 
they  satisfied  him  even  less  than  the  ruling  class,  for  the 
ruling  class  just  wanted  to  keep  things  as  they  were,  and 
more  so.  He  could  understand  that.  Any  one  can  under- 
stand conservatism,  because  no  one  need  do  so.  Thus,  in 
that  glowing  month  of  June,  when  still  the  Allied  front 
was  twisting  and  bending,  Sir  Hugh  found  himself  in  an 
intellectual  desert.  He  had  lost  faith  in  all  men  and  all 
systems,  so  far  as  the  future  of  the  world  was  concerned. 
He  thought:  "The  solar  system  is  like  a  roulette  gone 
mad,  and  the  earth  is  the  ball.  It's  been  rolling  for 
millions  of  years;  what's  going  to  happen  if  it  stops? 
What  hole  will  the  ball  plump  into?  Thirty-six  —  A 
pocketful  of  money  for  everybody  —  or  zero?  And  the 
eternal  banker  sweeps  up  the  stakes?  "  Only  Sir  Hugh 
could  not  stay  in  that  state  of  mental  suspension ;  he  was 
too  accustomed  to  hero-worship;  he  had  worshipped 
Gladstone;  in  1886  he  had  worshipped  Chamberlain; 


THE  LONE   GREY   COMPANY     401 

later,  Sir  Edward  Grey  had  been  his  ideal.  Now  no 
leader  could  lead  him,  and  he  could  not  lead  himself.  So 
he  had  to  choose  no  longer  between  men  but  between 
emotions.  This  explained  his  sudden,  rhapsodic  feeling, 
when  he  realised  in  Leicester  Square  England's  burning 
youthfulness.  He  understood  that  behind  scheming  dip- 
lomats, grasping  ambassadors,  ambitious  princes,  stood 
arrayed  vast  multitudes,  mute  and  inglorious,  masses  of 
English  people  who  had  made  a  rough  liberalism,  masses 
of  Germans  who  had  practised  research,  masses  of  Ameri- 
cans who  had  developed  beyond  belief  the  intelligent  way 
of  mechanical  life.  More  and  more  he  realised  the  Amer- 
icans; he  did  not  understand  them  well,  because  they 
seemed  so  urgent,  so  restless,  so  individually  desirous  — 
and  yet,  perhaps  because  they  were  free  from  our  rotten 
class  traditions,  they  were  the  only  people  in  the  world 
who,  so  far,  had  created  a  moral  ideal. 

This  realisation  of  the  spirit  of  the  people,  which 
transcends  forms  and  crowns,  brought  him,  for  the  first 
time,  to  think  of  England  as  England  and  not  as  the 
United  Kingdom.  Those  three  months  had  been  a  time  of 
swift  growth.  He  had  thought  about  the  Englishman, 
generalised  about  him.  He  saw  him  now  in  his  slowness, 
his  moderation,  his  affected  love  of  liberty,  the  roots  of 
which  were  set  in  indifference;  he  understood  that  the 
gusts  of  passion  which  perpetually  carry  him  away  and 
cause  him  to  set  up  false  gods  meant  that  the  Englishman 
was  a  repressed  creature  who  always  sought  for  a  vicar 
to  express  him.  But  when  he  considered  the  Englishman's 
achievement  through  the  ages  it  was  impossible  to  despise 
him.  He  had  not  been  continuously  inspired  by  idealism; 
though  he  had  risen  against  an  autocratic  Stuart  and  an 
unpopular  faith,  though  he  had  put  down  slavery,  though 
he  certainly  had  gone  to  war  in  '14  for  the  defense  of  an 


402  BLIND  ALLEY 

injured  little  country,  he  had  never  pursued  a  principle. 
The  Englishman  had  been  like  the  others,  ambitious  for 
his  flag,  greedy  for  his  purse,  and  yet,  in  so  doing,  he  had 
brought  liberty,  and  a  rough  version  of  civilised  comfort 
into  every  corner  of  the  world.  The  Englishman  in  his- 
tory had  been  the  champion  of  moderation,  and  to  extend 
his  moderate  sway  had  been  guilty  of  the  worst  excesses. 
The  Englishman  was  splendid,  top  dull  to  understand  his 
defeats,  too  heavy  to  be  moved  aside  from  his  objects,  too 
careless  to  be  a  tyrant,  too  indifferent  to  thought  to  per- 
secute it,  and  he  had  erected  comparative  liberty  by  not 
caring  a  damn  what  anybody  else  did.  Strange  creature 
that  understands  nothing  and  benefits  by  everything !  The 
Englishman  had  treated  the  Americans  of  the  eighteenth 
century  as  rebels,  and  after  his  defeat  had  quietly  gone 
away  and  given  all  his  other  conquests  the  freedom  he 
had  refused  those  Americans;  the  Englishman  had  hated 
the  French  Revolution  of  1789  —  and  fifty  years  later 
adopted  its  parliamentary  system;  all  through  the  late 
nineteenth  century  the  Englishman  had  modelled  his  laws 
on  those  of  Germany  —  and  then  fought  Germany  be- 
cause he  disliked  its  form  of  culture.  He  was  incoherent, 
incompetent  in  the  extreme,  hated  the  very  word  "  ideal  ", 
and  yet  there  ran  through  his  heavy  frame  and  his  fine 
nerves  an  impulse  which  had  made  England  greater  than 
Rome,  and  more  enduring,  an  impulse  which  had  dammed 
rivers,  drained  swamps  and  turned  aside  seas,  which  had 
substituted  law  for  the  tomahawk,  the  Sunday-school 
reader  for  the  tribal  legend,  built  tramways  in  Central 
Africa  and  bathrooms  in  the  Solomon  Isles.  The  English- 
man had  rested  upon  the  universe  bored  blue  eyes,  and 
said:  "  Let's  be  comfortable  and  paddle  our  own  canoe." 
In  pursuance  of  this  intoxicating  ideal  he  had  cleared  the 
world  of  barbaric  strife  and  planted  the  eternal  monu- 


THE  LONE  GREY  COMPANY     403 

ments  of  civilisation  in  fields  where  never  had  floated  the 
lilies  of  the  French  or  the  castles  of  the  Portuguese. 

Such  thoughts  as  these  led  him  often  into  the  fields. 
Generally,  now,  he  walked  across  the  marsh  because  he 
liked  its  breadth  and  the  prospect  of  the  symbolic  sea. 
Often,  as  he  passed  Policeman's  House,  he  thought  of 
Cradoc,  and  the  arguments  which  long  ago  nearly  had 
captured  him.  He  realised  that  eventually  he  would  meet 
him  on  this  familiar  marsh,  and  so  one  day  was  not  sur- 
prised to  see  him  come  across,  it  seemed  from  Camber. 
He  watched  him.  Cradoc  was  thinking.  He  paused  for 
a  long  time  before  some  shorn  sheep.  As  he  came  up  to 
Sir  Hugh,  he  smiled:  it  did  him  good  to  meet  somebody 
who  was  not  hostile.  They  talked  for  a  moment  on  the 
road.  Cradoc  had  married  Molly  at  last.  In  the  end 
they  had  gone  to  the  registrar's  because  Molly  found  Mr. 
Denny  so  tepid  that  she  left  the  Church  on  the  spot. 
As  she  put  it:  "What's  the  good  of  going  to  church  for 
twenty  years  if  the  vicar's  going  to  be  rude  to  you?  " 

"  So  I  suppose  you're  very  happy,"  said  Sir  Hugh. 

Cradoc  shrugged  his  shoulders.  "  I'm  afraid  I've  lost 
the  gift.  Still,  I  don't  want  to  commit  suicide,  so  I  sup- 
pose I've  got  some  reason  to  like  life.  This  war  makes 
one  realise  how  much  life's  worth." 

"  You  mean  how  little." 

"  No,"  said  Cradoc,  "  it's  cheap  enough,  but  those  who 
can  stick  to  it  realise  what  it  holds  when  they  tell  them- 
selves they  might  be  lying  stiff  in  a  foreign  field." 

"Yes,"  said  Sir  Hugh.  "  Though  —  Rupert  Brooke 
said  something  about  a  soldier  .  .  . 


If  I  should  die  think  only  this  of  me: 

That  there's  some  corner  of  a  foreign  field 

That  is  for  ever  England." 


404  BLIND  ALLEY 

Then  Cradoc  said,  with  a  little  sneer:  "  If  Lord  North- 
cliffe  is  right  in  saying  we've  nine  hundred  thousand  dead, 
we've  gone  some  way  towards  internationalising  the 
world.  Rather  drastic." 

"  Don't  be  so  literal,"  said  Sir  Hugh,  and  tried  to  make 
him  understand  this  new  feeling  of  his,  the  spirit  of  Eng- 
land which  predominates  over  English  systems.  The 
conscientious  objector,  narrow-headed,  acute,  and  incred- 
ibly rigid,  listened  to  the  end  and  said: 

"  You've  let  me  talk  plainly  to  you  before,  so  I  suppose 
I  shan't  offend  you  if  I  say  that  you're  only  a  patriot, 
after  all." 

"  Yes,"  said  Sir  Hugh,  feeling  excitement  rise,  "  yes, 
I'm  a  patriot  in  spite  of  my  fatherland.  I  believe  there 
is  in  the  English  people,  in  all  the  Anglo-Saxon  peoples, 
Englishmen,  Americans,  Anglo-Saxon  colonies,  a  moral 
ideal  which  will  regenerate  the  world.  And  I'll  tell  you 
something:  if  I  hadn't  been  too  old,  I'd  have  enlisted 
with  the  rest,  and  I've  been  thinking  that  perhaps  I'm  not 
too  old." 

"  So  you  too  must  die  for  error?  " 

"  No.  I  don't  wholly  disagree  with  you.  I'm  not  in 
love  with  the  capitalist  system,  but  I'm  coming  to  think 
that  whether  the  peace  be  glorious  or  ignoble,  peace  is 
worth  fighting  for  for  its  own  sake." 

"  Nothing  is  worth  fighting  for,"  said  Cradoc.  "  Except 
perhaps  freedom." 

Then,  to  his  own  amazement,  Sir  Hugh  had  an  out- 
burst: "Freedom!  freedom!  you  socialists  have  always 
got  your  mouths  full  of  freedom.  For  a  hundred  years 
youVe  specialised  in  freedom,  and  there's  hardly  one  of 
you  has  stuck  to  his  doctrine.  Look  at  your  own  leaders ! 
at  Hyndman  addressing  recruiting  meetings,  Will  Thorne 
turned  into  a  colonel;  think  of  Herve,  who  for  ten  years 


THE  LONE   GREY  COMPANY     405 

before  the  war  preached  that  the  working,  man  had  no 
fatherland,  advocated  military  strikes,  and  suggested  that 
the  proper  billet  for  the  workman's  bullet  is  the  back  of 
his  own  officer.  Herve  supports  this  war  with  the  same 
fury  of  eloquence;  and  Anatole  France  writes  thirty  vol- 
umes in  every  one  of  which  a  sneer  or  a  cry  of  hate  greets 
every  general  who  treads  the  boards:  when  this  war 
breaks  out  he  tries  to  enlist.  Kropotkin  was  for  the  war ; 
Scheidemann  was  for  the  war;  Gorky  was  for  the  war. 
And  your  parties  who  got  into  power  on  opposition  to 
war,  Englishmen,  Frenchmen,  Germans,  all  of  you  who 
for  generations  have  killed  war  with  your  mouth,  came 
along  with  the  bourgeoisie.  You  didn't  tell  the  soldiers 
to  strike.  You  didn't  tell  the  workmen  to  strike.  You 
didn't  tell  them  to  refuse  taxes.  No!  all  you  socialists, 
like  the  time-servers,  the  lickspittles  you  are,  after  all 
your  talk  at  meetings,  voted  war  credits  and  supplied  fod- 
der to  the  guns.  What's  the  good  of  you?  Why!  you 
can't  even  hold  together  inside  a  nation,  let  alone  in  the 
world.  You  quarrel,  you  wrangle,  you  burgeon  off  in 
sectional  rivalry.  In  this  country  one  can't  even  find 
one's  way  among  your  Labour  Parties,  Independent  La- 
bour Parties,  Trade  Unions,  Fabian  Societies,  British 
Socialist  Parties,  Social  Democratic  Parties,  National 
Socialist  Parties,  Trades'  Councils,  National  Guilds,  and 
heaven  knows  what.  For  chaos  you've  only  one  rem- 
edy, and  that's  another  chaos.  If  you  do  establish  any- 
thing, it's  either  a  Bolshevism  where  no  man  is  safe  and 
no  man  is  fed,  or  some  State  socialist  machine  run  by 
bureaucrats  with  brass  buttons  on  their  coats  and  electric 
buttons  on  their  desks.  You  lead  to  a  State  where  every- 
thing is  regulated;  where  the  London  County  Council 
will  be  Controller  of  Paradise,  where  everything  will  be 
against  the  law  because  everything  will  be  law,  and  where 


406  BLIND  ALLEY 

there  will  be  no  liberty  because  no  man  can  do  anything 
he  wants  without  slightly  interfering  with  the  equal  lib- 
erties of  others." 

"  Then  you're  against  me,"  said  Cradoc.  "  I'm  sorry. 
I  thought  you  were  coming  to  us."  He  did  not  trouble 
to  answer  the  arguments  of  his  adversary.  They  had 
made  no  impression  on  him  because  his  mind  was  en- 
tirely filled  with  his  created  ideal,  petrified  in  a  way; 
though  he  was  open  to  reason,  he  could  not  realise  that 
anything  outside  his  ideal  might  be  reasonable.  He  was 
as  decided  that  everything  must  be  changed  as  a  country 
squire  is  decided  that  nothing  may.  In  his  fury  of 
reerection  Cradoc  was  practically  a  Conservative. 
"  After  all,"  he  added,  "  it  doesn't  matter.  When  the 
revolution  comes  what  good  could  an  aristocrat  like  you 
do?" 

Sir  Hugh  smiled.  "  I  suppose  there's  only  one  law  for 
a  man  of  my  sort.  This  war  comes,  and  probably  I  must 
die.  If  the  revolution  comes  I  can  commit  hara-kiri." 


XV 

SLOWLY  Sir  Hugh  pulled  at  his  pipe.  It  was  a  black 
September  night,  and  already  he  was  at  ease  in  this  com- 
munication trench,  his  rifle  between  his  knees,  his  head 
bent  under  the  helmet,  waiting  contentedly,  thoughtlessly, 
for  orders  that  might  come,  or  as  contentedly  to  wait  if  no 
orders  came.  Two  months,  and  a  soldier.  Already  his 
thoughts  were  those  of  a  soldier:  his  right  boot  hurt  him; 
the  coffee  essence  that  day  had  been  worse  than  usual. 
And  a  barrage  had  stopped  the  letters.  For  a  moment 
he  absorbed  himself  in  impressions  of  the  night.  There 
was  little  doing  on  this  strip  of  the  Lorraine  front  where 
the  Legion  occupied  a  short  sector.  Far  away  in  the 


THE  LONE   GREY  COMPANY     407 

northwest  he  heard  a  steady  rumble  from  the  American 
guns  on  the  other  side  of  Verdun,  and  some  ten  miles 
south,  where  also  the  Americans  lay  in  front  of  the  St. 
Mihiel  bend,  something  was  going  on.  It  amused  him  to 
think  that  however  quiet  it  might  be  here  in  the  French 
sector,  both  north  and  south  the  Americans  were  de- 
termined that  something  should  go  on.  And  the  smile 
released  his  thoughts. 

"  They're  taking  their  time,"  said  Prokop  by  his  side. 
Douro  grunted:  he  was  a  northern  Spaniard,  silent  as 
a  Highlander,  and  Prokop,  an  always-ebullient  Slovak, 
irritated  him.  The  Slovak  went  on  talking.  Sir  Hugh 
liked  him,  for  sometimes  in  rest  billets  Prokop  executed 
extraordinary  dances,  and  he  had  a  way  of  playing 
Deutschland  ueber  Alles  on  an  incredible  instrument  made 
of  two  cigar  boxes,  some  waxed  string  and  a  nail,  which 
drove  the  snipers  into  absurd  fury.  The  fourth  man  they 
did  not  talk  to.  Though  it  was  not  etiquette  in  the 
Legion  to  ask  questions,  it  was  felt  that  a  man  who  was 
tall,  fat,  fair,  and  dared  to  call  himself  Bdjsky  and  to  say 
he  was  a  Jugoruthen,  must  be  a  Boche.  Most  of  the 
non-coms  had  tried  to  get  him  killed:  as  they  never  suc- 
ceeded this  was  taken  as  a  further  sign  that  he  must  be 
a  Boche. 

The  men  went  on  talking  in  whispers.  Sir  Hugh  won- 
dered how  long  it  would  be  before  the  officer  came  back 
to  take  them  out  on  patrol.  Carelessly  he  noted  the 
sound  of  stray  bullets:  zzz-pt,  they  came,  and  now  and 
then  zzz-pf ,  as  they  struck  a  stone.  "  Funny  thing  to 
have  happened  to  him,"  he  reflected.  "  How  easy  it  had 
been  in  a  way.  The  slow  march  of  his  mind  all  through 
that  summer,  the  realisation  that  though  no  political  sys- 
tem was  worth  the  bones  of  a  Pomeranian  Grenadier, 
there  was  something  that  must  not  die,  and  that  was 


408  BLIND  ALLEY 

England."  Being  logical,  he  had  in  July  realised  that  he 
must  enlist.  He  smiled  as  he  thought  of  Billy  Bridge. 
The  barrister  had  sat  back  in  his  armchair  at  the  Mauso- 
leum Club  and  laughed:  "  My  dear  fellow,"  he  had  said, 
"  they  simply  wouldn't  look  at  you.  You  get  on  with 
your  job  at  the  Board  of  Control."  Sir  Hugh  had  not  at- 
tempted to  make  Billy  understand  his  high  romantic 
feeling;  that  could  not  have  been  done  without  a  trepan. 
He  had  simply  insisted,  and  when  Billy  at  last  had  taken 
him  seriously,  he  explained  that  even  if  he  bribed  his  way 
into  the  army,  which  was  feasible,  the  officer  would  turn 
him  back  when  he  inspected  the  draft.  He  had  suggested 
a  job  on  the  staff  if  Hugh  really  wanted  khaki  and  a 
chance  to  get  photographed.  But  Sir  Hugh  insisted  that 
he  didn't  want  to  go  on  the  staff,  but  to  do  something  for 
his  country.  At  last,  provided  with  an  introduction,  he 
had  gone  to  Finsbury  to  interview  the  C.  0.  of  the  Hon- 
ourable Artillery  Company. 

His  thoughts  took  another  turn.  That  was  the  day  of 
the  Finsbury  election.  His  appointment  being  in  the 
evening,  he  had  found  himself  outside  the  City  Road 
Tube,  where  Belcher  was  addressing  a  crowd.  Sir  Hugh 
remembered  the  yells  of  "  Intern  them  all !  "  There  had 
been  a  row,  too ;  a  naval  officer  shouted  something  about 
another  candidate,  and  Sir  Hugh  was  carried  in  a  rush 
that  knocked  a  man  over,  was  for  a  moment  the  centre  of 
struggling  arms  and  legs;  an  officer  with  a  Mons  ribbon 
seemed  to  be  fighting  two  or  three  people,  and  Sir  Hugh 
kicked  something  soft  that  said  "  gaw."  The  crowd  had 
carried  him  into  Banner  Street,  led  by  Mr.  Pemberton 
Billing.  Sir  Hugh  smiled  as  he  remembered  the  flying 
stones,  the  breaking  of  windows,  and  Mr.  Billing's  high 
voice  as  he  shouted :  "  I  declare  war  on  Tupper !  I  chal- 
lenge him  to  come  out  and  fight!  " 


THE  LONE  GREY  COMPANY  409 

"  Comic/'  thought  Sir  Hugh.  He  had  ceased  to  think 
these  things  painful. 

Something  came  over,  and  he  ducked,  being  still  a  raw 
soldier.  Zzz-oo,  murmured  the  thing;  then:  Boom! 
Whizz  bang,  probably.  As  they  laughed  at  him  at  the 
H.  A.  C.  he  had  decided  to  join  the  Foreign  Legion.  That 
night  Lady  Oakley  wept  on  his  neck  and  quoted  some 
lines  fit  to  hearten  him: 

"  What  have  I  done  for  you, 
England,  my  England? 
What  is  there  I  would  not  do, 
England,  my  own?  " 

Poor  old  Lena,  she'd  got  it  bad.  They'd  taken  him  in 
the  Legion,  asked  no  questions,  and  trained  him  in  six 
weeks.  Damn  that  coffee.  It  was  that  gave  him  a  pain. 
Zzz-boom !  And  Prokop  trying  to  tell  him  in  detail  how 
he  lost  his  innocence. 

Ah,  here  was  the  officer,  a  short,  hard  little  French 
ranker,  with  the  manner  of  a  slaver  and  the  pluck  of  a 
wild  cat.  No  flies  on  the  Legion  officers.  Well,  they'd 
be  going  over  now.  His  first  patrol!  Sir  Hugh's  heart 
beat  faster.  But  the  officer  went  on  and  into  a  dugout. 
Sir  Hugh  found  himself  admiring  the  neat  trench,  with 
its  well-timbered  wall  and  the  graceful  French  pattern  of 
brattices.  Yes,  change  had  come  upon  him.  As  strange 
a  change  as  anybody's.  Everything  had  changed,  every- 
thing was  changing.  The  young  men.  had  stopped  in 
their  careers,  might  resume  them,  might  make  others; 
who  would  go  back  to  the  'Varsity  after  such  sport  as 
this?  Girls,  too.  They'd  found  new  sports,  strange 
tasks,  rapid  loves,  bereavements  that  would  drive  them 
into  looseness  or  waste  them  into  dry  age.  Exalted  and 
hardened  women,  how  were  we  going  to  absorb  them. 


410  BLIND  ALLEY 

Would  not  the  youngest  be  old?  Perhaps,  too,  all  youth 
would  be  old.  Poor  Stephen  was  old,  and  yet  crude.  Sir 
H(ugh  wondered  how  youth  would  fare,  so  mature  and 
so  inexperienced.  Everything  provided  to  intoxicate 
and  excite  them,  war,  kudos,  new  pleasures,  high  wages 
for  the  poor,  a  taste  of  luxury  for  the  middle  stratum; 
how  were  they  going  to  maintain  all  that?  What  was  the 
boy  of  sixteen  going  to  do  when  his  two  pounds  a  week 
failed  him  —  the  second  lieutenant  when  he  had  to  brush 
his  own  breeches?  Everybody  was  in  it.  He  wondered 
whether  the  institutions  would  suffer  as  much  as  the  in- 
dividuals, whether  the  trade  unions  would  break  under 
the  internal  stress  of  the  rank  and  file  revolting  against 
their  officials,  the  guerilla  between  patriotic  labour  parties 
and  pacifists.  Democracy  was  in  chaos,  no  doubt.  And 
all  we  offered  them  were  the  fruits  of  chaos;  the  papers 
were  full  of  paragraphs  about  housing,  about  the  main- 
tenance of  high  wages,  the  partnership  between  Capital 
and  Labour,  the  opening  up  of  land  to  the  soldiers  —  yes, 
it  was  all  very  well,  but  Sir  Hugh  wondered  whether  this 
was  good  will  or  whether  it  did  not  merely  arise  from  a 
panic  in  the  ruling  class.  He  smiled:  the  ruling  class 
would  be  all  right;  it  would  imitate  the  Russian  noble- 
man attacked  by  wolves,  and  would  keep  off  Labour  by 
throwing  out  of  the  sled,  from  time  to  time,  sections  of 
the  middle  class.  "  The  ruling  class,"  he  thought,  "  well, 
it  won't  be  the  same.  Now  for  the  rule  of  the  vulgar.  It 
may  be  as  well;  the  motto  of  my  old  class  was:  'Defiance' 
not  '  Defense.'  No  wonder  we've  got  licked  by  Albert 
Stanley,  and  Geddes,  and  Weir,  and  the  other  tradesmen." 
For  a  moment  he  mourned  his  old  class.  At  bottom  he 
hated  the  business  man;  he  found  him  adventurous,  there- 
fore almost  an  adventurer.  He  thought  it  right  that  the 
tailor  should  become  a  colonel  in  "  General  Post",  but 


THE  LONE   GREY  COMPANY     411 

he  had  not  liked  it;  he  thought  it  right  that  Parliament 
should  crawl  upon  its  belly  and  wag  an  ingratiating  tail 
when  Lloyd-George  raised  his  voice,  but  he  did  not  like 
it.  What  blind  alley  did  all  this  lead  to?  No  growth 
here,  nor  reaction;  just  England  shoved  into  abstinence 
from  privilege,  suspensions  of  power,  mechanical  con- 
trols, with  no  sign  of  shape  in  the  future  times;  no  planned 
State  with  production  exactly  fitted  to  need,  good  wages 
for  all,  limited  profits,  regular  employment,  but  blind 
alley. 

Incoherent  thoughts  filled  his  mind  as  his  view  of  Eng- 
land grew  cosmic.  He  realised  from  memories  of  news- 
papers and  plays  how  high  and  how  swiftly  had  risen 
the  tide  of  stunt,  vulgar  sensationalism,  sentimentality, 
lip-patriotism.  He  found  blind  alley  everywhere,  blind 
alley  in  the  debt,  so  enormous  that  it  could  not  be  repaid ; 
blind  alleys  in  the  chaos  of  the  churches,  whose  ship  was 
pitching  on  "  love  your  enemies",  and  rolling  on  "  not 
peace,  but  a  sword."  Poor  old  ark,  beaten  by  the  current 
of  non-resistance,  heading  to  the  maelstrom  of  a  British 
god  —  no  wonder  they  were  sick  on  board  and  sought 
desperately  for  some  Zotos,  whether  spiritualism,  the 
Thirty-Nine  Articles,  or  the  Mons  angels.  Blind  indeed 
that  alley,  and  blind  the  schools,  where  the  old  culture 
was  being  pulled  down,  though  nobody  knew  what  to  put 
up  instead.  No  Latin,  no  Greek.  Simple  enough,  but 
one  could  not  educate  boys  through  the  things  one  did  not 
teach  them.  Double  entry  and  Morris  dances,  he  sup- 
posed. But  what  then?  What  sort  of  men  were  we  try- 
ing to  make  —  deliberately?  Nobody  knew.  It  looked 
like  an  open  road  and  it  was  blind  alley.  Blind  alley 
everywhere.  Blind  alley  in  the  law,  which  let  off  one 
soldier  for  shooting  his  wife's  lover,  and  gave  another  five 
years  for  the  same  crime ;  blind  alley  in  the  rising  cry  for 


412  BLIND  ALLEY 

a  greater  population,  balanced  by  the  obstinate  refusal  of 
the  State  to  give  the  illegitimate  a  status;  blind  alley  in 
liberty,  now  that  letters  were  opened,  that  the  press  was 
censored,  that  meetings  were  supervised,  political  pamph- 
lets officially  garbled;  blind  alley  in  the  State,  with  its 
daily-spreading  bureaucrats,  just  stuck  there,  regulating, 
controlling,  determined  to  go  on  till  doomsday ;  blind  alley 
for  those  who  came  back,  maimed,  fit  only  for  half  work, 
or  for  sweating  .  .  .  He  felt  passionately  that  this  war 
was  not  leading  anywhere ;  it  was  only  keeping  something 
up.  But  horribly,  it  was  not  leaving  things  as  they  had 
been;  it  was  rooting  things  up,  and  it  was  not  preparing  a 
new  order;  there  was  no  purpose,  except  in  Wilson,  per- 
haps, and  some  hard  common  sense  told  Sir  Hugh  that 
the  others  would  see  to  it  that  Wilson  did  not  make  an 
ordered  world.  Chaos  would  coalesce  against  clarity,  and 
it  would  win,  because  there  is  in  mankind  more  chaos 
than  clarity.  They  did  not  want  to  evolve  anything  bal- 
anced; they  liked  the  scrum,  the  gamble  of  trade,  the 
battle  of  master  against  man,  sentiment,  cruelty,  error, 
insecurity;  they  liked  to  barge  in  their  millions,  fierce 
faces  ground  against  each  other,  into  the  blind  alley  of 
the  future. 

The  officer  came  back.     Prokop  was  still  whispering. 

"  Toi  ta  gueule! "  said  the  officer.  "  I'm  going  over," 
thought  Sir  Hugh.  Exciting.  He  wanted  to  go  over. 
He  had  been  twice  in  small  shows;  he  had  killed  his 
Boche,  too,  apart  from  the  unknown  results  of  rifle  fire. 
The  man  had  run  at  him  from  a  dugout  as  the  Legion 
swarmed  over  the  first  line,  fired,  missed;  as  he  lurched 
forward,  an  active,  dark  little  man,  he  slipped  as  he 
lunged:  without  a  tremor,  in  an  automatic  movement,  Sir 
Hugh  had  stuck  him  in  the  side  It  struck  him  as  queer 
that  this  memory  should  be  so  neutral:  he  had  swung  to 


THE  LONE  GREY  COMPANY  413 

the  left  as  he  struck,  quite  regulation,  so  as  to  free  his 
bayonet.  It  hadn't  come  out  readily  —  as  if  the  edge  of 
the  wound  were  sucking  at  the  knife  like  lips. 

Now  the  four,  spaced  out,  had  crawled  through  the 
wire.  No  Man's  Land.  Black  and  pitted  with  holes. 
Something  stank.  There  was  a  sniper  in  one  of  those 
holes.  Orders  were  to  come  upon  him  suddenly  and  make 
an  end  of  him.  Sir  Hugh  fumbled  in  the  darkness,  walk- 
ing light.  The  slightest  noise  would  expose  him.  Now 
and  then  stray  bullets  fell:  zzz-pt,  they  said,  and  zzz-pf. 
It  seemed  endless,  and  noisy,  because  one  listened  so 
hard.  He  found  few  shell  holes  here.  Then,  with  a 
shiver,  he  saw  something  on  the  left,  instinctively 
crouched,  his  bayonet  low.  But  the  shape  told  him  this 
must  be  one  of  his  own.  Indeed,  as  the  thing  came  closer, 
he  saw  it  was  Prokop. 

Then  things  happened  all  of  a  sudden.  One  of  those 
speculative  bullets  hit  the  Slovak,  who  gave  a  long,  shrill 
cry  and,  seeing  Sir  Hugh,  clung  to  him,  knocked  off  his 
helmet.  Sir  Hugh  put  his  hand  over  the  man's  mouth, 
but  not  in  time  to  stop  the  high  chatter.  Life  arose  in 
the  trench  opposite.  Verey  lights  went  up,  and  from  quite 
close  came  the  pac-pac-pac  of  a  machine  gun.  Sir  Hugh's 
coolness  left  him.  He  dropped  the  body  as  if  to  run,  but 
at  that  moment  was  petrified,  for  a  searchlight,  unmasked, 
struck  him  full  in  the  face.  It  was  like  a  shaft  of  silver 
in  his  eyes ;  it  numbed  him,  crushed  him ;  with  ineffectual 
hands  which  had  dropped  the  rifle  he  tried  to  shield  his 
eyes;  he  wanted  to  get  out  of  the  light  and  could  not. 
"  Like  a  moth,"  he  thought,  "  like  a  moth."  Then  some- 
thing struck  his  head,  gently,  it  seemed,  and  he  turned  to 
go  back,  his  hands  against  his  forehead,  walking  steadily 
in  the  beam  of  light,  hypnotised  by  the  narrow  white  blaze 
that  his  feet  followed.  He  thought:  "  My  head's  heavy," 


414  BLIND  ALLEY 

and  irrelevantly,  of  rabbits  who  run  at  night  upon  the 
roads,  trapped  by  the  beam  from  a  motor-car  lamp.  Then 
he  tripped  upon  the  French  wire,  and  as  he  fell  a  complete 
darkness  rose  in  him.  He  thought  with  immense  relief: 
"  How  black  everything  is !  I  must  have  got  out  of  the 
beam." 

XVI 

It  was  ten  minutes  to  eleven.  Sir  Hugh  paused  in 
Trafalgar  Square.  He  was  due  at  the  Board  of  Control, 
to  close  some  old  business,  at  a  quarter  past.  He  had 
walked  down  from  Connaught  Square  and  now  stood 
aimless,  a  little  depressed  by  the  grey  day  and  by  the 
excitements  of  the  previous  weeks.  He  had  seen  war, 
lived  for  weeks  under  shell  fire  and  heavy  rain;  he  had 
seen  tragedy,  too,  in  the  hospital  train  which  carried 
him  from  Lorraine  with  eight  hundred  Americans,  nearly 
all  bad  cases,  some  of  gas.  But  he  was  lucky.  His  head 
wound  was  so  slight  that  by  the  middle  of  October  he 
was  discharged  from  hospital.  The  doctors  had  thought 
him  rather  old;  strings  had  been  quietly  pulled  by  Lady 
Oakley,  who  had  arrived  in  Paris  the  day  he  reached  the 
base  hospital.  He  had  been  discharged.  He  smiled  as 
he  remembered  his  arrival  in  Paris.  He  saw  a  picture 
of  himself  in  his  blue  horizon  uniform,  a  narrow,  precau- 
tionary bandage  round  his  head.  As  Lady  Oakley  led 
him  out  of  the  Gare  de  L'Est  to  the  waiting  cab,  a  little 
group  of  French  soldiers  in  full  kit,  burnt  a  deeper  brown 
than  was  gained  in  the  Lorraine  trenches,  were  lined  up 
in  the  yard  behind  piled  arms.  He  remembered  a  scrap 
of  their  song: 

"  Depuis  qu'j'suis  v'nu  dans  c'te  putain  d'Afrique, 
Ou  c'que  j'fais  PJacques  avec  un  sac  su'l  dos, 
Un  sac  su'l  dos, 


THE  LONE  GREY  COMPANY  415 

Je  suis  dev'nu  sec  comme  un  coup  d'trique, 

J'ai  bientot  plus  que  la  peau  sur  les  os: 

C'est  nous  les  Joyeux,  les  petits  Joyeux, 

Les  petits  Joyeux  qui  n'ont  pas  froid  aux  chasses; 

C'est  nous  les  Joyeux,  les  petits  Joyeux, 

Les  petits  Joyeux  qui  n'ont  pas  froid  aux  yeux." 

Wild  looking  men  they  were,  a  kind  he  had  not  seen 
before.  A  friendly  porter  told  him  they  were  part  of  a 
Bataillon  d'Afrique,  rogues,  mutineers,  all  the  scapegraces 
and  unmanageables,  nearly  all  men  with  a  past  and  with- 
out a  future,  yet  of  all  the  most  gallant.  He  understood 
whence  had  sprung  that  desperate  and  cheerful  song.  He 
sighed.  Soldier  brothers  of  his  in  a  common,  vague 
cause,  robber  knights.  Blackguards  and  saints  together 
had  died,  for  fun,  for  habit,  for  love,  or  because  they  had 
nothing  else  to  'do,  because  the  world  had  grown  the 
prey  of  men  so  vile  that  all  one  could  do  was  to  give  the 
mastery  to  some,  and  then  patiently  as  the  insect  builds 
the  coral-reef,  create  against  the  junkers,  both  vanquished 
and  victorious,  a  more  harmonious  edifice.  Out!  All 
over,  and  the  war  too,  it  seemed.  He  had  not  reenlisted, 
for  obviously  the  job  was  done;  the  English  policeman, 
in  his  bored,  good-humoured  way,  had  moved  on  the  dis- 
turbers and  now,  it  seemed,  was  content  to  take  the  same 
old  wages  from  the  same  old  commissioner.  He  smiled 
at  his  metaphor:  he  was  wrong,  for  even  the  police  had 
struck.  Still,  it  did  not  do  to  analyse  metaphors. 

Yes,  it  was  all  over.  That  doubtless  was  why  the 
Oakleys  had  reopened  Connaught  Square.  As  in  the 
first  days  of  the  war  they  had  felt  unable  to  stay  locked 
up  in  Knapenden;  they  needed  to  be  in  the  middle  of 
the  rumours,  special  editions  and  telephone  calls;  they 
could  not  bear  to  let  peace  happen  and  not  be  there. 
As  he  waited  in  the  square  he  felt  nervous  as  a  lover  on 


416  BLIND  ALLEY 

a  silken  ladder;  the  ladder  would  hold  all  right,  and 
everything  felt  safe,  but  his  nerves  were  in  rags.  Too 
much  had  happened  in  the  last  six  weeks.  It  was  almost 
impossible  to  remember  how  De  PEsperey  had  crashed 
through  the  Bulgarian  front  and  at  a  blow  brought  down 
Ferdinand,  while  Allenby  in  Palestine  swept  up  north, 
swift  as  a  weasel.  Then,  with  an  effect  of  shock,  Ger- 
many had  accepted  the  Fourteen  Points,  and  for  one 
long  month  Sir  Hugh  had  lived  in  agonised  uncertainty 
while  Wilson,  almost  inhuman  in  his  absolute  logic  and 
his  entire  clearness  of  purpose,  demanded  to  know  beyond 
perad venture  whether  the  German  junker  was  indeed 
dead. 

Every  one  of  Wilson's  notes  had  filled  him  with  the 
delight  that  a  skilled  advocate  experiences  in  the  pres- 
ence of  a  perfect  case;  inch  by  inch  Wilson  had  forced 
the  junkers  back,  driven  them  into  admissions,  hunted 
them  into  the  publicity  of  their  own  newspapers,  enlisted 
on  his  side  a  German  public  opinion  clamouring  for  free- 
dom. But  all  through  something  Lansdownian  clung  to 
Sir  Hugh:  supposing  Wilson  went  too  far?  Drove  the 
junker  to  turn  and,  by  military  dictatorship,  prolong  this 
horror  another  year?  That  had  made  rag  of  his  nerves, 
and  also  he  who  now  had  fought  and  bled  sickened  before 
the  stream  of  rumour  according  to  which  every  day  Tur- 
key surrendered  and  the  Kaiser  abdicated.  He  had  lived 
a  long  life  and  was  not  yet  used  to  the  triumph  of  lies. 
Nor  had  he  learned  intemperance  of  thought  while  high 
explosive  broke  and  fumed  a  few  yards  from  the  parapet 
to  which  he  clung.  They  had  been  a  nightmare,  those 
weeks  in  London.  He  lived  in  a  world  where  the  non- 
combatants  strove  and  fought  for  the  first  time  —  and 
against  peace.  Still  his  ears  were  filled  with  the  agon- 
ised cries  of  the  patriotic  papers,  of  the  Carsons,  the  Bot- 


THE   LONE   GREY   COMPANY     417 

tomleys,  the  Beresfords,  of  Le  Matin  and  Le  Journal, 
which  he  had  learned  to  read.  He  thought  of  Senator 
Lodge,  struggling  for  blood  and  revenge,  seeing  every- 
where peace  trap  and  evasion,  beside  himself  at  -the  idea 
that  Germany  might  be  spared  ravage,  and  gathering 
to  stand  by  him  in  the  last  ditch  all  who  might  help  in 
preventing  Wilson  from  forcing  peace  on  a  joyful,  blood- 
thirsty world.  Nightmare,  ves,  nightmare.  Those  people 
of  the  Mausoleum  Club  were  still  crying  out  to  refuse  an 
armistice,  to  invade,  to  devastate,  to  show  the  Germans 
what  burning  churches,  hanged  U-boat  crews,  gibbeted 
Kaisers,  looked  like  —  and  this  as  a  mild  inducement 
to  the  German  people  to  accept  unconditional  surrender. 
Then,  all  through  the  month,  territorial  demands  had 
been  whispered,  demands  that  slunk  and  hid  behind  the 
broad  justice  of  Wilson's  points,  new  demands  for  terri- 
tory, for  mining  rights,  for  colonies,  for  the  creation  of 
incoherent  States  intended  to  weaken  Germany,  not  to 
create  stability,  States  like  Poland  and  Bohemia,  to  which 
we  would  hand  over  German  populations  who  would  fer- 
ment and  plot  exactly  as  the  enslaved  Italians  and  Serbs 
had  plotted  against  Austria.  We  were  going  to  fill 
Europe  with  Ulsters. 

Sir  Hugh,  in  those  weeks,  had  come  across  as  much 
fear  and  as  much 'greed  as  in  the  worst  moments  of  the 
war.  His  friends  were  necessarily  professional  men, 
men  of  leisure,  merchants,  engineers,  and  among  them  he 
sought  in  vain  for  an  idea,  even  a  foolish  one,  of  the 
reconstruction  of  society.  He  found  nothing.  They 
weren't  thinking  about  making  a  new  society;  all  they 
were  thinking  about  was  the  coming  labour  unrest,  the 
difficulties  of  demobilisation.  All  they  wanted  was  to  set 
up  the  old  system  again,  with  high  wages  if  they  must, 
and  high  profits  if  they  could;  with  the  employer  at  the 


418  BLIND  ALLEY 

top  and  the  worker  at  the  bottom;  with  the  good  old 
houses  and  the  good  old  bugs,  subject  to  a  housing  pro- 
gramme which  would  provide  employment  and  stop  Bol- 
shevism. They  wanted  to  increase  production  and  to  grab 
it;  to  buy  cheap  shares,  develop  Russian  copper  and  tin; 
they  expected  unemployment  to  settle  somehow ;  when  the 
war  debt  was  mentioned  they  raved  against  the  capital 
levy,  which  "  would  destroy  credit  by  swallowing  cap- 
ital "  —  and  yet  they  had  nothing  to  put  up  against  the 
alternative  seven-and-sixpenny  income  tax.  They  had 
no  ideas ;  they  weren't  looking  for  ideas.  They  were  con- 
tent that  ten  million  men  should  have  died  for  the  sake 
of  business  as  usual. 

And  Mr.  R.  G.  Knowles  was  promoting  a  universal  road 
to  be  built  from  the  sea  to  Switzerland,  along  the  old 
trench  lines,  so  that  humanity  might  never  forget  its 
hatred.  He  had  seen  man's  passion  for  separate  nation- 
ality give  rise  to  fever.  Nobody  wanted  unity  and  home 
rule  within  that  unity.  Nobody  would  let  any  one  else's 
faith  or  language  alone;  everybody  wanted  a  given  na- 
tionality to  prevail.  People  one  had  never  heard  of  as 
separate  people,  Slovaks,  Syrians,  Vlachs,  Podolians, 
wanted  their  own  government  and  flag,  to  set  up  more 
frontiers  —  and  armed  guards.  The  United  States  of  the 
World  were  a  dream. 

He  Had  grown  dull  at  last.  Austria  had  crashed,  and 
this  was  described  as  camouflage.  Sir  Hugh  wondered 
whether  the  unconditional  surrender  of  Germany  would  be 
described  as  the  culmination  of  German  camouflage.  It 
was  incredible.  We  were  asking  for  the  trial  of  those  re- 
sponsible for  atrocities  —  that  is  to  say,  for  the  trial  of 
those  people  who  alone  could  make  peace,  for  an  armistice 
without  terms,  presumably  to  inspire  confidence,  to  refuse 
to  deal  with  the  new  German  Government,  presumably 


THE  LONE  GREY  COMPANY  419 

to  help  on  Bolshevism  in  Germany.  "  Let  them  Bolsh," 
said  the  Globe.  This  struck  Sir  Hugh  as  terrible.  He 
wondered  whether  the  Globe  thought  that  Bolshevism 
stopped  at  frontiers  and  would  spare  us.  He  wondered 
whether  the  Globe  would  say  "  Let  them  typhe,"  if 
typhoid  were  raging  next  door. 

And  yet,  in  spite  of  the  little  men  struggling  to  keep 
off  Peace,  she  was  coming,  white  and  bland.  The  day 
before,  everybody  was  sure  the  armistice  would  be  signed, 
and,  feeling  peace  coming,  everybody  was  quarrelsome. 
There  had  almost  been  a  fight  at  the  Gadarene  Club  on 
Saturday,  because  the  Kaiser  had  abdicated  again  at 
half-past  five,  and  the  secret  Lansdownites  came  out  to 
face  the  last-ditchers  with  the  suggestion  of  easier  terms. 
The  people  were  quieter.  All  through  Sunday  they  had 
formed  little  crowds  in  Downing  Street.  Then  they  grew 
tired  of  waiting  for  Mr.  Lloyd-George  and  went  to  St. 
James's  Park  to  see  the  German  guns,  which  the  little 
boys  were  using  as  seesaws. 

"  I  wonder,"  thought  Sir  Hugh,  "  whether  this  is  really 
going  to  end."  He  looked  round  the  Square,  bleak,  silent 
and  grey.  There  were  not  thirty  people  in  it.  A  few 
yards  away  stood  an  Australian,  puffing  at  his  pipe  with 
an  air  of  melancholy.  Dent's  clock  said  five  to  eleven. 
Sir  Hugh  thought  he  had  better  be  getting  on  to  the 
Board.  He  felt  cold.  Then,  from  nowhere,  sprang  a 
man  who  climbed  the  plinth  of  the  Nelson  Column  and 
there  stood  a  board.  Interested,  Sir  Hugh  drew  closer. 
Roughly  chalked  were  the  words: 

ARMISTICE  SIGNED 

For  a  moment  he  did  not  move.  He  felt  calm.  So 
it  had  come!  Well,  there  you  were.  Evidently  the  Aus- 


420  BLIND  ALLEY 

tralian  agreed,  for  he  turned,  read,  and  turned  away 
again,  drawing  from  his  pipe  a  puff  of  ethereal  resig- 
nation. But  inside  Sir  Hugh  felt  excitement  rise.  Some- 
thing was  spreading  over  the  city.  One  after  the  other 
the  windows  of  the  Grand  Hotel  and  of  the  other  gov- 
ernment offices  down  Northumberland  Avenue  grew 
crowded  with  girls'  heads.  The  thirty  people  in  the 
Square  turned  into  a  hundred,  and  Sir  Hugh  heard  the 
first  ragged  cheer  as  four  improperly  dressed  soldiers 
passed.  But  his  true  thrill  came  when,  solemn  and  self- 
contained,  a  policeman  climbed  the  plinth  and  on  a  bugle 
sounded  the  "  all  clear."  It  seemed  as  if  all  London 
were  emptying  itself  into  the  Square.  Sir  Hugh's  ears 
registered  the  hurried  patter  of  feet,  as  girls  and  men  ran 
out  of  the  government  offices.  Things  happened  round 
him,  more  and  more  noisy,  more  and  more  overwhelm- 
ing; crowds  swarmed  across  the  roads  until  they  were 
too  thick  to  move ;  submerged  the  base  of  the  Column  in 
a  black  tide.  People  were  blowing  horns;  a  procession 
led  by  a  soldier  beating  a  bucket  was  heading  for  Buck- 
ingham Palace  through  the  Mall.  Bursting  maroons 
filled  the  populace  with  a  joyful  sense  of  inoffensive  air 
raid.  He  saw  Australians  dancing,  cars,  taxis,  A.  S.  C. 
lorries  being  stormed  by  a  crowd  determined  to  ride  any- 
where. For  a  whole  hour  he  remained  half  stunned  in 
the  middle  of  the  roaring  crowd.  He  heard  the  joy  bells. 
That  day  he  passed  in  chaos.  It  took  him  two  hours  to 
get  back  to  Connaught  Square,  for  the  crowds  would  not 
move,  and  already  people  in  the  tubes  could  neither  get 
in  nor  get  out.  The  house  was  empty;  his  family  and 
all  the  servants  were  lost  in  the  streets. 

It  was  an  incredible  week.  Day  by  day,  and  night  by 
night,  he  was  the  centre  of  a  crowd  full  of  youth,  that 
bellowed,  and  danced,  and  drank,  where  respectable  old 


THE  LONE   GREY  COMPANY     421 

gentlemen  like  himself  felt  ridiculous  with  flags  in  their 
top-hats.  On  the  Tuesday  night  he  was  kissed  in  a  pro- 
miscuous way  to  which  he  was  not  used.  His  pocket  was 
picked  in  the  same  moment,  but  Sir  Hugh  was  too  inno- 
cent to  connect  such  a  fact  with  natural  impulses  .  .  . 
Yes,  it  was  over.  Was  he  happy?  He  did  not  know. 
It  was  enough  that  the  war  was  over  and  that  the  new 
times  could  not  be  so  hideous  as  those  four  years. 

XVII 

JANUARY  again,  and  the  war  was  done.  Sir  Hugh  stood 
in  Udimore  copse,  swishing  with  his  stick  at  the  dead 
brambles.  Once  more  the  prophecy  of  spring  in  his  nos- 
trils, of  obstinate  life  rising  again.  He  thought:  "  It's  a 
long  time  since  I  came  here.  Since  Monica  and  I  came 
to  see  the  lambs.  I  wonder  what  Monica  meant  last 
night  by  asking  me  if  I  thought  one  could  be  happy  if 
one  married  a  man  who  loved  one  and  whom  one  didn't 
love.  I  said  yes,  because  love  is  such  a  speculation  and 
there  are  so  few  people  whom  one  can  love  for  ever.  So 
why  bother  at  the  start.  I  don't  think  I  ought  to  have 
said  that.  It's  an  idea  suitable  for  fifty-five,  not  for 
twenty-eight.  Though,  after  all,  people  who  are  twenty- 
eight  must  become  people  of  fifty-five ;  they  may  as  well 
make  a  start.  I  wonder  when  the  world  will  be  fifty- 
five." 

So  his  thoughts  went  away  to  this  world  which  he 
now  considered  with  a  little  irony,  some  indignation  and 
much  pity.  What  a  tragic  world  it  had  been  since 
Armistice  Day!  "It  had  always  been,"  he  supposed; 
"  the  history  of  the  world  was  a  tragedy  in  a  million 
acts."  He  remembered  Anatole  France's  universal  history 
of  men:  they  were  born,  they  suffered  and  they  died. 


422  BLIND  ALLEY 

What  surprised  him  was  that  they  should  suffer  so  will- 
ingly and  do  so  little  to  guard  against  future  suffering. 
The  past  election  had  filled  him  with  disquiet  and  shame. 
He  had  seen  it  rushed  upon  the  nation,  for  no  reason 
except  to  snatch  a  swift  mandate  for  a  prime  minister 
who  dared  not  wait  until  the  people  faced  their  cold  fit; 
he  had  seen  elected  instead  of  a  parliament  which  had 
ceased  to  represent  the  people,  because  it  was  old,  a  par- 
liament which  did  not  represent  them  at  all,  because 
only  half  or  so  could  vote.  He  did  not  mind  that  very 
much,  at  bottom,  for  he  was  aristocrat  enough  to  despise 
the  parliament  in  whose  defense  he  would  have  died,  but 
he  hated  the  preludes  to  its  birth.  He  had  tried  to  set 
his  sail  to  the  windiness  of  Mr.  Lloyd-George's  speeches, 
read  every  line  of  them  to  discover  what  precisely  was 
going  to  be  done  to  provide  houses,  to  open  the  land  to 
the  soldiers,  but  not  a  single  indication  could  he  find  of 
how  it  was  going  to  be  done,  who  was  going  to  pay  for  it. 
He  found  that  the  new  order  was  founded  on  three  war 
cries:  "  Hang  the  Kaiser  ",  "  Make  the  Hun  pay  ",  and 
"  Keep  the  Hun  out." 

"  Rather  negative,"  he  thought,  "  for  a  new  order." 
He  hated  the  spirit  of  it  all.  He  hated  the  bagman  strain 
which,  in  every  newspaper,  totted  up  costs  and  made  out 
invoices  for  presentation  to  Germany.  "By  all  means 
let  them  pay  for  the  actual  damage,"  thought  Sir  Hugh, 
"  but  don't  let  us  bankrupt  our  souls  to  fill  our  purses." 
Every  day,  in  the  newspapers,  he  read  suggestions  that 
we  should  recover  fifty  thousand  millions,  by  taking  over 
the  German  industries  and  presumably  making  the  people 
work  under  the  lash.  If  we  did  this,  what  of  the  future? 
Were  we  going  to  keep  the  Germans  out  of  the  League  of 
Nations  as  perpetual  enemies?  Make  of  the  League  of 
Nations  a  league  against  Germany  compelled  forever  to 


THE  LONE   GREY  COMPANY     423 

arm  and  prepare  war?  He  found  that  the  League  of 
Nations  had  no  friends,  that  those  who  tolerated  it  did 
not  mean  to  disarm.  They  wanted  the  peace  of  Jean 
Coq,  an  armed,  shining,  terrible  peace,  a  peace  that  would 
burst  like  a  shell  and  set  the  world  in  a  blaze  .  .  .  All 
of  them,  all  of  them. 

In  the  Park  he  had  heard  a  speaker  of  the  Women's 
Party  educating  an  open-eyed  people  in  the  theory  that 
the  League  of  Nations  was  a  good  thing  provided  Ger- 
many was  kept  out  and  the  others  leagued  against  her! 
Already  Wilson  was  beaten  on  the  freedom  of  the  seas, 
just  as  he  was  beaten  on  naval  disarmament.  It  was 
natural  that  soldiers  should  lay  down  their  arms,  but 
sailors  must  keep  their  cutlasses.  Only  in  those  weeks 
had  he  realised  the  superstitious  worship  which  attaches 
to  the  British  fleet;  it  embodied  our  sense  of  romantic 
war;  that,  he  knew,  was  the  danger  more  potent  than 
the  greed  of  merchants  and  the  pride  of  kings:  the 
poetry  of  war,  the  glamour  that  has  made  Shakespeare 
small  and  Nelson  great.  He  hated  the  people  then ;  they 
deserved  the  rulers  they  got. 

And  what  rulers!  Diplomats  were  only  super-card- 
sharpers.  And  they  didn't  even  do  that  properly.  In- 
capable of  understanding  the  people,  refusing  to  meet 
them  because  they  despised  them,  revolution  always  took 
them  by  surprise:  had  not  Lord  Milner,  a  week  before 
the  fall  of  the  Czar,  assured  us  that  all  was  steady  in 
Russia!  But  they  could  always  finesse  themselves  deeper 
into  their  mess.  Already,  in  those  six  weeks,  we  had 
stretched  our  armistice  terms,  demanded  the  surrender 
of  more  merchant  ships,  extended  the  neutral  zone  on 
the  Rhine  .  .  .  Germany  was  down,  why  not?  We 
had  signed  an  armistice  based  on  the  Fourteen  Points, 
and  every  day  we  set  up  new  points  in  our  favour.  The 


424  BLIND  ALLEY 

French  papers  were  openly  demanding  a  buffer  State, 
presumably  under  French  protection,  on  the  left  bank  of 
the  Rhine,  without  reference  to  the  German  inhabitants; 
Italy  was  seizing  from  the  Slav  the  Adriatic  coast  and 
claiming  her  share  of  Asia  Minor  without  reference  to 
the  Greek  population;  we,  too,  wanted  Palestine;  the 
French  wanted  Syria.  "  Was  all  that  in  the  Fourteen 
Points?  "  he  wondered. 

Perhaps  not,  but  Germany  was  down,  why  not?  Had 
not  the  war  created  a  vast  civil  service?  One  had  to  find 
them  colonial  jobs.  National  feeling,  which  is  the  enemy 
of  peace,  was  the  spirit  of  sabotage.  Every  one  to  have 
his  own  dunghill.  He  realised  that  until  all  mankind 
stood  under  one  flag,  enjoying  only  local  home  rule,  war 
would  continue.  The  price  of  nationality  was  war. 
Now,  in  the  name  of  nationality,  grab  and  revenge  were 
the  preludes  to  the  new  order.  It  would  be  built  on  sus- 
picion, on  the  theory  that  behind  a  frontier  of  bayonets 
Germany  would  arm  and  try  again.  It  was  a  pretty  way 
of  inducing  her  to  keep  quiet,  to  prepare  to  inflict  upon 
her  people  crushing  tribute,  economic  boycott,  and  the  loss 
of  German  speaking  peoples.  It  hurt  Sir  Hugh  to  think 
that,  apart  from  Wilson,  a  few  pacifists  in  Golder's  Green, 
and  some  conscientious  objectors  in  gaol,  nobody  sympa- 
thised with  the  German  revolution  any  more  than  with  the 
Russian.  Capital  was  supreme ;  stricken  already  with 
the  madness  which  destroys  all  power,  capital  was  trying 
to  make  the  German  revolution  worse  by  suppressing  in 
every  paper  but  two  the  fact  that  Hoover,  the  American 
Food  Controller,  wished  to  raise  the  blockade,  so  that  the 
German  people  might  not  by  famine  by  driven  into  Bol- 
shevism. 

Yes,  it  had  been  a  sickening  election,  more  dishonest 
than  usual.  He  did  not  object  to  conscription,  if  proved 


THE  LONE   GREY   COMPANY     425 

necessary,  but  it  enraged  him  to  read  consecutive  state- 
ments by  the  Prime  Minister  which  all  disagreed:  first, 
conscription  depended  on  the  Peace  Conference;  then 
there  would  not  be  any  if  other  nations  gave  it  up ;  then 
there  might  and  then  there  mightn't;  and  anyhow  we 
must  maintain  our  fleet,  which  was  purely  defensive  as 
it  could  not  go  to  Berlin,  though,  in  the  course  of  defence, 
it  had  won  the  war!  Sir  Hugh's  ironic  sense  delighted 
in  Mr.  Lloyd-George.  It  took  a  professional  democrat 
to  realise  the  stupidity  of  the  people.  And  he  had  been 
right,  he  had  won.  He  had  stood  for  the  old  system  of 
balance  of  power  as  against  a  League  of  Nations,  the  old 
system  which  had  made  rivalry,  secret  alliances,  and 
war.  He  had  won,  and  now  would  fasten  on  England 
conscription  and  censorships.  The  war  had  given  free- 
dom to  beaten  Germany  and  beaten  Russia,  and  raped 
freedom  from  victorious  England,  perhaps  from  victorious 
America,  who  seemed  about  to  provide  for  a  big  navy  as 
the  profit  of  her  victory. 

The  election  was  Wilson's  defeat,  though  Wilson  was 
already  beaten.  Already  Congress  was  turning  against 
him.  Even  the  Americans  were  ensnared  by  dreams  of 
domination,  and  Roosevelt  was  having  a  success  with  his 
Twelve  Points,  gaining  cheers  by  proposing  that  Germany 
should  have  no  vote  in  the  Peace  Conference,  no  place 
in  the  League  of  Nations,  and  be  the  victim  of  a  com- 
mercial boycott,  while  only  the  reactionaries  of  Russia 
(camouflaged  as  the  party  of  law  and  order)  were  to 
attend  the  Peace  Conference.  It  was  dreadful.  It  was 
like  the  program  of  our  new  One  Flag  League,  that  clam- 
oured for  the  whole  of  the  German  commercial  navy, 
her  entire  gold  reserve,  and  the  management  of  all  her 
industries. 

"  They  hope  to  weaken  Germany  so  that  she  cannot 


426  BLIND  ALLEY 

prepare  revenge,"  thought  Sir  Hugh,  "  and  indeed  they 
may  delay  it  —  but  every  one  of  those  exactions  is  a  seed 
from  which,  in  coming  generations,  hate  and  revenge  will 
sprout  in  a  hundred  million  German  hearts.  The  only 
way  to  prevent  revenge  is  to  deprive  it  of  cause,  to  refrain 
from  taking  an  acre  unless  the  inhabitants  wish  it;  to 
forego  all  indemnities  except  for  actual  damage;  to  do 
nothing  to  cripple  Germany  commercially,  but  to  help 
her  new  democracy  to  be  happy.  Happiness  is  the  foe 
of  revenge.  And  as  for  our  debt,  we  the  rich  must  pay 
it  because  we  own  England  and  are  answerable  for  her 
debts." 

Still  he  swished  at  the  brambles  that  crackled  and 
broke.  He  hoped  for  no  new  democratic  order:  even 
the  British  democracy  loved  it  not.  It  had  voted  against 
Liberalism  and  Labour;  so  long  as  the  Kaiser  was  hanged 
and  it  was  revenged,  it  didn't  care  how  we  handled  Rus- 
sia and  protected  England's  future.  The  British  elector 
didn't  care  whether  we  had  a  secret  policy,  or  any  policy 
in  Russia.  It  saw  our  rulers  refuse  to  discuss  peace  with 
the  Bolsheviks  and  inform  the  Germans  that  a  German 
Bolshevik  Government  would  also  be  ignored.  And  yet 
the  voter  believed  that  we  accepted  Wilson's  theory  and 
didn't  want  to  impose  on  any  country  a  form  of  govern- 
ment other  than  it  chose.  Indeed,  the  electors  cheered 
the  statement  that  the  Bolsheviks  were  a  sham  govern- 
ment and  cared  nothing  that  the  Russian  people  had 
tolerated  it  for  fourteen  months.  The  elector  was  fed 
on  Bolshevik  atrocities,  and  did  not  conclude  that  the 
Bolsheviks  were  atrocious  because  the  regime  of  the 
Tsar  had  turned  them  into  brutes.  He  read  with  horror 
that  the  beggars  and  vagabonds  who  usually  lived  in  the 
cellars  were  turning  princesses  into  the  snow  —  and  did 
not  tell  himself  that  the  princesses  were  merely  suffering 


THE  LONE   GREY  COMPANY     427 

retribution  for  having  during  centuries  kept  these  people 
in  cellars.  The  elector,  like  his  ruler,  had  but  one  remedy 
for  social  unrest:  invade.  Never  an  attempt  to  under- 
stand and  meet  grievance,  but  force,  and  more  force. 
Invade  and  grind  these  new  social  democracies,  so  that 
the  French  bondholders  might  get  their  interest  and  the 
British  company  promoters  their  concessions.  Gerry- 
mandered? Sir  Hugh  would  have  liked  to  believe  it. 

It  was  true  that  two  thirds  of  the  soldiers  were  dis- 
franchised, that  opposition  candidates  had  to  go  to  the 
Government  for  petrol  and  for  paper,  that  the  Press 
Bureau  censored  their  news,  and  that  Sinn  Fein  leaflets 
were  blacked  out  —  but  that  didn't  explain  it  wholly. 
He  did  not  know,  but  he  felt  with  a  security  almost 
divinely  revealed  that  the  people  liked  the  coalition  of 
interests  and  hates.  The  women  had  been  the  worst, 
stimulated  like  Sylvia  and  his  wife  by  the  excitement  and 
bloodshed,  blackly  afraid  of  all  novelty. 

He  wondered  what  would  happen.  In  May  or  June 
military  demobilisation  would  make  complete  the  indus- 
trial chaos.  Nothing  effective  would  be  done,  and  so  the 
coalition  might  drive  into  Bolshevism  those  who  would 
ask  for  bread  and  be  given  promises.  Even  America 
faltered ;  Senator  Knox  and  Senator  Lodge  were  supreme, 
haters  of  all  change,  upholders  of  the  old  cutthroat  world 
of  labour  slavery  and  capitalist  profit.  Grab  and  grab 
...  It  was  driving  him  mad.  Even  Belgium  wanted 
to  grab  now,  and  was  asking  the  Allies  to  back  her 
against  Holland  so  as  to  get  back  Dutch  Limburg  and 
the  mouth  of  the  Scheldt,  to  redress  an  historical  injus- 
tice —  of  which  nobody  had  said  a  word  for  eighty  years. 
Always  it  was  nationality  running  mad,  the  fetish  of 
flags.  Wales  and  England  could  live  under  a  common 
British  King,  the  Anglo-Americans  of  the  Eastern  States 


428  BLIND  ALLEY 

and  the  Hispano-Americans  of  the  southwest  under  a 
common  president,  but  all  these  new  people  wanted  sep- 
aration, hatred,  armies. 

Would  Parliament  stand  in  the  way?  He  smiled. 
Parliament  was  a  tied  house,  not  even  a  public  one;  it 
was  run  by  national  bosses  responsible  for  no  govern- 
ment department,  therefore  responsible  for  nothing;  the 
cabinet  left  out  the  great  departments.  Money  was 
voted  without  specific  object,  spent  and  accounted  for 
by  a  gesture.  All  cheques  were  blank.  Acts  of  Parlia- 
ment did  not  avail,  for  their  working,  by  means  of  regu- 
lations, lay  in  the  hands  of  the  bosses;  they,  too,  were 
blank  cheques.  Sir  Hugh  laughed  aloud  at  the  idea  of 
Parliament  rising  against  tyranny:  why  should  it  rise? 
With  a  hundred  of  its  members  in  paid  offices  under  the 
Government,  and  half  the  rest  placated  with  anything 
between  the  Grand  Cross  of  the  Bath  and  the  fifth  class 
of  the  0.  B.  E.,  why  should  the  Tory  junkers  rise?  The 
world  was  their  orange.  He  saw  what  it  led  to,  to  an 
increased  public  contempt  for  Parliament,  for  the  with- 
drawal of  labour  from  an  assembly  of  political  domestics, 
to  an  unconstitutional  control  by  massed  trade  unions 
outside,  who,  sic  volo,  sic  jubeo,  would  obey  or  not  as 
they  chose  —  until  the  time  came  to  upset  the  bourgeois 
applecart  and  light  with  its  spokes  the  first  bonfire  of 
revolution. 

The  idea  of  revolution  terrified  him,  and  yet  he  found 
himself  driven  towards  extremism  because  he  was  a  mod- 
erate, and  nobody  would  listen  to  him,  because  nobody 
wanted  to  build  a  harmonious  new  world.  As  he  clung 
to  the  hope  of  future  peace,  sufficient  food  and  freedom 
for  all  men,  the  ruling  class  was  beating  on  his  hands. 
"  What  else  but  revolution,"  he  thought  with  a  shiver, 
"  can  get  rid  of  leaders  who  won't  lead  anywhere  —  of 


THE  LONE   GREY   COMPANY     429 

the  Angus  Cawstons,  K.  B.  E.  —  of  the  Gadarene  Club, 
heaving  in  its  fat  —  of  the  Mausoleum  Club,  pickling  in 
its  vinegar? "  Those  people  were  getting  into  power, 
backed  by  the  people's  faculty  for  hatred;  they  were 
getting  in,  the  smugs,  the  slys,  the  barnacles.  They  were 
going  to  make  a  limpet  State,  cling  to  their  property, 
prepare  new  wars  by  preparing  new  hatreds.  Those  men 
who  had  shown  themselves  incapable  of  working  the  old 
order  —  were  they  going  to  make  a  new  one?  They 
could  make  nothing,  those  men  on  the  make. 

For  a  moment  he  wondered  what  he  meant  by  a  new 
order.  He  had  little  hope  of  Labour.  Labour  had  voted 
for  hate.  He  did  not  trust  socialism  in  any  form;  he  saw 
it  as  an  alternative  tyranny  because  it  was  worked  by 
alternative  tyrants.  His  vision  was  feudal;  he  would 
have  liked  a  country  run  by  trustee  aristocrats,  who 
would  live  no  more  splendidly  than  their  servants,  but 
would  live  for  them,  for  the  honour  of  leading  them,  for 
the  privilege  of  helping  them,  for  the  joy  of  seeing  rise 
factories  rich  in  beauty  and  schools  rich  in  culture.  He 
knew  it  could  not  be,  that  Platonic  dream  —  but  all  he 
asked  of  these  new  rulers  was  some  sort  of  dream,  dif- 
ferent from  the  old,  dead  world ;  that  they  should  not  be 
content  with  restoring  exactly  the  old  world  of  struggle 
and  domination,  but  dream  dreams,  as  Monica  said,  the 
stuff  that  worlds  are  made  of  ... 

Again  he  thought  of  Monica.  She  stood  away  from 
the  world  and  the  slogan  of  the  new  society:  "Squeeze 
the  lemon."  No  room  for  her  any  more  than  for  him. 
He  wondered  what  she  meant  by  her  question.  Hum, 
probably.  He  knew  that  she  had  seen  him  several  times 
while  he  was  serving  in  France.  He  sighed:  he  mustn't 
make  himself  responsible  for  his  daughter ;  she  had  better 
mar  her  life  than  have  it  made  by  her  father.  Though, 


430  BLIND  ALLEY 

perhaps,  he  interfered  too  little.  There  was  Sylvia,  three 
months  married  to  Oliver  March.  He  could  not  detach 
himself  from  them,  for  the  young  man  had  broken  with 
his  people  and  a  career  must  be  made  for  him.  Sylvia 
would  have  a  child  in  the  summer,  too.  How  angry  she 
was  about  it;  she  had  had  to  give  up  the  idea  of  canteen 
work  with  the  troops  in  Germany.  He  smiled  as  he 
remembered  her  disappointment,  for,  as  she  put  it,  "  Ger- 
many's the  only  place  now;  Flanders  is  so  out  of  date." 

Slowly  he  walked  back,  but  the  sun  was  out  now,  and 
he  did  not  want  to  shut  himself  up  in  his  study,  so  he 
walked  on  until  he  reached  Charles  Oakley's  house.  The 
old  man  had  been  ill  and  now  could  hardly  make  himself 
understood.  He  was  nearly  seventy-eight.  As  he  went 
in  Sir  Hugh  wondered  whether  he  would  hear  the  familiar 
sound  of  the  fretsaw,  and  whether  his  uncle  was  prepar- 
ing some  intricate  inlay,  say,  for  presentation  to  Wilson. 
As  he  went  into  the  library  he  saw  Charles  Oakley  in  the 
big  armchair  by  the  long  table.  The  old  man  smiled  at 
him,  knotting  his  brows  to  see  him  better.  Indeed,  now 
he  was  more  than  Pan  grown  old,  he  was  Pan  grown 
senile.  He  lowered  his  eyes,  and  as  Sir  Hugh  saw  what 
was  happening  he  shrank.  Pinned  all  over  the  table  still 
lay  the  war  maps,  and  with  a  baby  smile  the  old  man 
was  shifting  flags  upon  the  Western  front. 

"  Uncle  Charles!  Uncle  Charles!  "  cried  Sir  Hugh  in 
a  voice  filled  with  horror.  "  What  are  you  doing?  The 
war's  over." 

The  old  man  looked  up,  smiled  again,  and  his  soft 
fingers  of  pink  putty  went  on  in  idiotic  satisfaction, 
shifting  the  little  flags  of  the  past  over  the  battlegrounds 
of  the  future. 


THE   LONE   GREY   COMPANY     431 

XVIII 

KALLIKRATES  slowly  pushed  his  head  from  under  the 
cabinet  in  the  hall.  He  had  slept  there,  in  warm  dark- 
ness, all  the  afternoon.  He  watched  to  see  whether  old 
Toss  was  asleep  on  the  hearthrug,  then  remembered  that 
Toss  was  dead.  Confident,  he  came  out,  shook  the  dust 
from  his  golden  coat,  listened.  Dinner  time.  The 
humans  were  eating.  All  was  well  and  secure  in  a  desert 
world.  So,  jaunty  still,  though  his  trot  was  a  little  laden 
by  his  five  years,  he  crossed  the  hall  towards  the  study. 
By  the  desk  he  hesitated,  thoughtfully  rubbed  himself 
against  the  staff  which  Stephen  had  used  in  his  lameness. 
A  sensual  thrill  ran  through  him;  the  world  felt  good. 
Then,  no  longer  light,  but  strong-bodied,  he  leapt  on  the 
corner  of  the  desk.  A  long  stare  of  his  amber  eyes 
assured  him  that  nothing  dangerous  lay  there.  So,  slowly, 
cautiously,  he  sank  down,  one  after  the  other  folded  the 
velvet  gauntlets  of  his  paws,  composed  his  squat  head 
into  the  sumptuous  silk  of  his  ruff.  His  eyelids  began 
to  droop,  the  watchful  strip  of  gold  below  them  grew  less 
and  less.  He  breathed  louder;  by  degrees  there  purred 
forth  from  his  throat  the  soft  song  that  conceals  neither 
joy,  nor  pain,  nor  hope,  but  is  all  content,  uncritical  and 
faith  eternal  in  the  permanence  of  aloof  good  things  in 
an  unchanging  world. 


The  Racial  Characteristics  of  French  and  English 


THE  LITTLE  BELOVED 


By  W.  L.  GEORGE 

12mo.     Cloth.     $1.60  net 


Not  since  Thackeray,  indeed,  has  any  English  novelist  done  a 
more  impressive  study  of  the  typical  Englishman.  It  is  not 
only  a  good  story;  it  is  a  notable  study  of  national  character.  — 
Baltimore  Sun. 

Not  merely  a  splendid  opportunity  for  contrast  between  the 
temperamental  differences  of  French  and  English,  but  a  narrative 
of  earnest  merit.  We  are  met  by  a  full  world  of  English  char- 
acters. —  New  York  Post. 

First  and  last,  interesting.  It  is  crowded  with  impressions, 
glimpses,  and  opinions.  There  are  many  characters  and  they 
are  all  living.  .  .  .  Reading  his  book  is  a  real  adventure,  by 
no  means  to  be  missed.  —  New  York  Times. 

A  vigorous  novel  based  upon  the  process  —  constructive  and 
destructive — whereby  a  typical  French  youth,  mercurial,  pas- 
sionate, spectacular,  is  transformed  into  a  staid  and  stolid 
English  householder  and  husband.  —  Chicago  Herald. 

Mr.  George,  one  of  the  most  promising  of  the  younger  English 
writers,  has  shown  the  process  of  naturalization  from  a  more 
striking  viewpoint,  in  this  story  of  the  changing  of  a  Frenchman 
into  an  English  citizen.  With  this  purpose  and  his  nervous, 
irritable  nature  trouble  is  sure  to  ensue,  and  he  has  adventures  in 
plenty. —  Boston  Transcript. 


LITTLE,  BROWN  &  CO.,  PUBLISHERS 
34  BEACON  STREET,  BOSTON 


By  the  Author  of  "The  Stranger's  Wedding" 


THE  SECOND  BLOOMING 


By  W.  L.  GEORGE 

12  mo.   438  pages.    $1.60  net 


A  strong  and  thoughtful  story.  —  New  York  World. 

A  story  of  amazing  power  and  insight.  —  Washington  Evening 
Star. 

Mr.  George  is  one  of  the  Englishmen  to  be  reckoned  with. 
One  now  says  Wells,  Galsworthy,  Bennett — and  W.  L.  George. 

—  New  York  Globe. 

This  writer  has  entered  with  more  courage  and  intensity  into 
the  inner  sanctuaries  of  life  than  Mr.  Howells  and  Mr.  Bennett 
have  cared  to  do.  —  Chicago  Tribune. 

Mr.  George  follows  a  vein  of  literary  brilliancy  that  is  all  his 
own,  and  his  study  of  feminine  maturity  will  find  ample  vindica- 
tion the  round  world  over.  —  Philadelphia  North  American. 

It  is  a  book  which  is  bound  to  appeal  to  women,  for  it  is  so 
extraordinarily  true  to  life  ;  so  many  women  have  passed  and  are 
passing  through  remarkably  similar  experiences.  —  London 
Evening  Standard. 

It  is  perhaps  the  biggest  piece  of  fiction  that  the  present  season 
has  known.  The  present  reviewer  may  frankly  say,  without  exag- 
geration, that  he  has  not  had  a  treat  of  similar  order  since  the  still 
memorable  day  when  he  first  made  the  acquaintance  of  Mr. 
Galsworthy's  "Man  of  Property."  —  Frederic  T.  Cooper  in  the 
Bookman  (N.  F.). 


LITTLE,  BROWN  £   CO.,  PUBLISHERS 

34  BEACON  STREET,  BOSTON 


LITERARY  CHAPTERS 


By  W.  L.  GEORGE 

241  pages.     12mo.     Cloth.     $1.50  net. 


Mr.  George's  book  is  a  highly  useful  and  entertaining  con- 
tribution to  modern  criticism.  It  is  refreshing  to  find  a  man 
writing  about  his  contemporaries  with  no  apparent  axes  to 
grind  or  favors  to  bestow. — Philadelphia  Press. 

The  most  diverting  book  that  has  come  this  way  in  a  month 
of  Sundays  is  W.  L.  George's  "Literary  Chapters."  George 
is  a  very  presentable  novelist  and  an  excellent  political  com- 
mentator, but  as  a  critic  of  writing  men  and  things  literary 
he  shines. — Chicago  Daily  News. 

Even  those  readers  who  seek  in  novels  an  escape  from 
unlovely  facts  of  life  into  a  land  of  ideal  sentiment  will  yet 
smile  over  many  a  page,  for  Mr.  George  delights  in  a  pungent 
style.  In  spite  of  his  diffuseness  and  numberless  paragraphs, 
irony  and  sarcasm  sparkle,  and  caustic  phrases  reveal  the 
master  of  innuendo. —  The  Nation,  New  York. 

One  may  not  always  agree  with  Mr.  George;  but  to  read 
his  book  is  to  be  stirred  and  heartened  as  by  some  stiff  yet 
pleasant  course  of  intellectual  gymnastics.  One  closes  the 
covers  with  regret. — Chicago  Herald. 


LITTLE,  BROWN  &  CO.,  PUBLISHERS 
34  BEACON  STREET,  BOSTON 


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